The People You Trust
by darkpheonix31
Summary: Harry never killed or tortured anyone, yet they convicted him for the crimes and sentenced him to life in Azkaban. His friends believe him guilty, the Ministry is more corrupt than anyone realizes and Voldemort is closing in. When the Order comes across info that only Harry can help them with, they need to furlough the prisoner for his help. Can they trust him? Can he trust them?
1. Unjustly Sentenced

**The People You Trust**

 _A/N: Longer summary at the bottom of his chapter for those wondering if this story is worth their time._

 _Warnings: Swearing and select adult situations, non-graphic in nature. Mentions of sexual abuse/rape (non graphic descriptions), violence, and trigger warning for a_ _ **suicide**_ _scene with an OC character_

 _Disclaimer: All characters and plot lines relating to Harry Potter are property of J.K. Rowling._

 **Chapter 1: Unjustly Sentenced**

 **July 8, 1996**

The full Wizengamot was in attendance as Harry Potter was led into Courtroom number 10 by a Dementor on each side. They had all be present just last year as the boy had been brought in on charges for underage magic and a few of them noted some of the changes in the boy. While the previous year he had stood before them looking nervous, unprepared and incredibly young, this time there was a very distinct look of resignation on his face. Although less than a full year had passed, the boy also looked remarkably older. Taller, and of slightly broader build in his shoulders, part of the changes were the normal passages of youth but it was the boy's demeanor that was remarkable, he looked at the Minister with a startlingly mixture of anger and kind of terror-filled defiance. It was not the kind of look a child had, who would have been nervous but at the same time confident that some stronger power would work things out for them. Instead it was the look of a man that fully understood how much trouble they were in and was prepared to face it despite knowing that odds were hopeless.

The boy had good reason to be terrified, the case the Minister had brought against him this year was not only for much graver offense than underage magic, it was almost airtight. Everyone present knew that Potter was guilty and the trial was more formality due to his celebrity in their world than to convince anyone of his culpability,

He up for conspiracy to corrupt minors, working for and swearing allegiance to the Dark Lord, revealing top secret information to a known traitor to the government, the torture of muggles and murder- the evidence was strong and plentiful. Everyone present already knew that the boy had been caught at the scene of the crime. Everyone in their world had been obsessively reading the horrible details of what the boy had done for days on end and there was no doubt that it would be a speedy trial. Most of them were already making long lunch plans.

When the boy was instructed to take a seat the chains of the prisoner's chair bound him in place and a leather gag was secured around his head when he tried to object to the charges made against him. With his icy glare that shook more than a full grown wizards in the court he certainly looked the part of a dangerous criminal and the 'upstanding' members of the community were quick to notice it.

The Minister had also had the forethought to prevent another embarrassing interruption from Albus Dumbledore appearing as a self-proclaimed defense council by naming him as a witness for the prosecution, effectively silencing anything that the man would (or even could) have said to help young Mr. Potter as he was now bound to only answer the questions that he was poised rather poise them himself. Though judging from the sad, bitter look of disappointment that the famous Headmaster was currently giving his formerly favored pupil many thought that they would not have to worry in the first place.

The morning had worn on with an endless stream of witnesses from the prosecution. They had built up the case gradually, showing that Potter had displayed an increasing pattern of deranged behavior starting as far back as his Third Year at Hogwarts and escalating over time to become a danger to others. More than a few whispers were made about the fact that as the headmaster of the school Dumbledore had shown enormous negligence in allowing the boy's behavior to not only go unchecked but had often encouraged it to a point where it became clear that the boy had gone from being rather manipulative and sneaky to outright cruel and murderous. Each of the witnesses were able to confirm the others' testimony, making the Minister's point clearer and clearer. However, despite the damning evidence that was brought before the court, there was still a strange reluctance in the air to officially convict. Most would later chalk up this feeling to the fact that it was the legendary Boy-Who-Lived. The child that they had all so blindly worshipped for magic that they could not even comprehend. Suddenly all of the whispers that had followed the supposed destruction of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named had new meaning. It was not a miracle that had saved them but instead it had been the presence of a new and potentially powerful dark lord- one that needed to be stopped sooner rather than later. They should all be thankful that they had managed to capture and subdue to the boy during his first real round of violence or else it was possible that he would have soon grown too powerful, too proficient at escape for them to capture at all.

And yet, despite everything there were several people that knew that there was _something_ left unsaid, some nagging feeling in their bones that told them that things were not as they appeared to be. Unfortunately it would many years before that feeling was fully understood or even remembered after that day.

The case that the former High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, Delores Umbridge, the lead prosecutor for Magical Law Enforcement, Andrew Decklan, and the Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge presented had certainly appeared straight forward at first glance. They alleged that after a full year of careful and methodical rebellion from the students of Hogwarts- led by Harry Potter- the boy had then coerced several students into following him to the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic meaning to hand over some of the most promising students to the Dark Lord as his first sign of loyalty. He had chosen his best friends to show that his loyalty to the man was in fact absolute and he would have no ties to his former life. The boy had then meant to officially take the Mark and reap the rewards of being You-Know-Who's right hand man- the first of which would be learning the Dark Arts from the top Death Eaters to employ against his abusive muggle relations.

Much of this plan had been spoiled by the appearance of Dumbledore's so-called Order of the Phoenix, an organization that most of them knew about from the war but had never learned the identities of the people that served to protect their world against the Death Eaters. Potter's plans to hand over the Longbottom boy, two Weasleys, Xenophilius' little girl and a muggleborn had been ruined but the Dark Mark found on his arm showed that he had somehow been forgiven for his failure and still been accepted into the man's ranks.

All five of Potter's classmates testified separately that Potter had had a 'vision' of his godfather, a known Death Eater the court was reminded, despite Potter's inane and muffled protests that the man was in fact innocent, was being held and tortured by You-Know-Who. However, the prosecution brought in several experts, ranging from researchers in the Department of Mysteries to healers at St. Mungos who were all in agreement that such a connection was impossible and that the boy was either delusional or using a ploy to get them to follow him.

Given the fact that several Death Eaters had been waiting in ambush to capture the children it was clear that the boy had conned them all in order to get them to his master.

But if it was a ploy why did all of the children also recount that Potter had attempted to forestall them from coming with him? Was it truly a play on their sense of loyalty and nobility as Decklan suggested? Clever 'reverse psychology' that compelled the children to follow after their supposed friend. Surely it must have been as Potter had been reluctant to seek out an adult for help and had refused to speak to his High Inquisitor who worked at the Ministry and who surely would have been of assistance. Though apparently the boy had a history of avoiding authority figures when dangerous situations arose. His friends had innocently claimed that they had always known that the boy had pure intentions, he had wanted to save them. However, when pressed they could not truly understand what had prevented them from seeking out help, even though none of them had any problems with authority figures or seeking help in ordinary situations. It became increasingly clear that the boy had been manipulating for a long while. Perhaps not maliciously at first. Even those against the boy did not think that an eleven year old was cunning enough to so thoroughly brainwash other school children but his sneaky behavior, his social isolation from most peers and his inability to confide in adults all pointed to some disturbing behavior patterns that had very obviously escalated.

It was also pointed out that Potter was the only student that had not sustained any injuries during the fight at the Ministry- very suspicious indeed. It was not surprising that the others had found themselves ill-equipped against trained and experienced Death Eaters, was the court expected to believe that a fifteen year old was capable of holding his own against them? The only clear explanation was that they were not aiming for him. This information, when pointed out correctly by the prosecution, suddenly made the parents of the two injured and obviously confused Weasley children outraged and for the first time in years they had questioned the wisdom of encouraging their kids to hang around with a boy who placed them in repeated and apparently escalating danger. From the Weasley girl's testimony, her parents had practically taken the boy in as another adopted son and they had never imagined that he would betray their trust.

Next, testimony was given that revealed that Severus Snape's position as a highly effective spy had been exposed by none other than Potter himself. The boy had been privy to the information despite having a well-known, long standing grudge against his professor, another obvious oversight by Dumbledore. Again the students had all agreed in their statements that the boy hated the potions' master and had done since his First Year in the school when the man had seemingly questioned the boy too intensely in his first class. The Healers' of St. Mungo's had a few theories about this kind of behavior. It was well-established that the Boy-Who-Lived enjoyed the spotlight and was used to receiving special treatment. The prosecution was careful to show that the potions' professor had been one of only a few teachers not to cater to such feelings of grandeur and Potter resented him for it. Snape's true allegiance had been exposed to the Dark Lord due to the boy's grudge against him and as an early sign of loyalty to the boy's new master. If it had not been for the quick actions of young Draco Malfoy the man would be dead.

The other charges were addressed when his muggle family was questioned. The boy had been arrested when a squib, Arabella Figg, had reported a disturbance at Number Four Privet Drive to the Ministry. The foolish woman had then not waited for the Aurors but instead had gone over to check on the situation herself, no doubt believing Harry Potter to be in grave danger- and she had walked into a terrible scene.

Potter's relatives, according to testimony from one Vernon Dursley, had been writhing in agony under the cruelty of the Cruciatus Curse, when Potter, startled by the appearance of a witness, reacted quickly and ruthlessly- immediately killing the old squib after she had so kindly collaborated his tale the previous year.

Thankfully the squib had already alerted the Aurors who were able to apprehend the boy after a brief and very one-sided duel. The easy way he had been taken down showed once again that the Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries clearly hadn't been heavily targeting him. Once securely under arrest at the Ministry, the full story had come to light. Lucius Malfoy, who had been captured the night of the Ministry break-in, confessed that Potter had been conspiring with the Dark Lord in exchange for the knowledge of how to revenge himself upon his muggle relatives after years of neglect and physical abuse. There had been evidence of extreme abuse that would have driven most to want revenge but the fact that the boy had taken it so viciously, employing the use of Unforgivable Curses could in fact-not be forgiven. Under their own sworn testimonies, every witness had backed up the story that Harry had been mistreated by his family and that he held no affection for them at all, although every one of them had either been shocked or even flat-out denied that the boy would have struck out at them with violence.

But the Aurors had found the boy with the Mark on his arm. Potter had been in custody since being apprehended at the Dursley Residence which meant that no polyjuice potion had been involved, and no one but Potter could have gotten past the wards of Number Four anyway. Prior to the trial Potter had been given Vertiserum, under which he confessed to having cast an Unforgivable Curse before, but then denied cursing his relatives or killing Arabella Figg. This was explained to the Court by the revelation that Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, had been able to throw off the Imperious Curse since the age of fourteen, no doubt he had been caught off guard against the potion initially but once he was in control he was able to fight off the effects of Vertiserum as well.

They had expected the defense that had come from the boys friends when they had been further questioned about the events of the past year, but the Aurors had already explained things to the children and despite a few bleating, disbelieving protests, even they had been at a loss to explain the boy's actions. Truth be told- it was the boy's closest friends that had helped secure the case most of all. After all- they were the ones that knew him best. They were ones that had been best able to reveal the pattern of behavior that no one else had been fully able to see.

The Granger girl, a muggleborn but one noted for her intelligence by several other witnesses , had been at a loss to explain how Harry could have been framed and despite her assertions to the Court, they could all could see the look of betrayal and hurt on her face as she looked at her now former-friend. The facts were spelled out clearly and although it took several pointed questions and reminders of the evidence she eventually allowed logic to override her emotion. Under oath, when asked if, given the evidence, she believed that the boy capable of the magic involved in the crimes despite only having just completing his OWLs, she had admitted the reluctant truth. When properly motivated for the need for revenge, Potter was capable of extraordinary magic. She had confessed that while Potter often struggled with Theory or essay writing when it came to their marks, when it came to true mastery of practical spells his were usually unmatched in power.

Ronald Weasley was similar, not as logical as the girl but still confident of his friend's integrity, he- at first- steadfastly stood by his best mate. However, once under oath he was also the one that had admitted more than any other witness how much Potter had hated his muggle relations. As his most trusted confidant, Potter had revealed to him more than anyone else about how he was treated at his relations home- but his friend and confidant had never revealed that the muggles had been physically abusive and again there was that look of startled insight from the witness as he realized that perhaps he did not know his best friend as well as he had once believed.

At long last the only one left to be questioned was the accused, one Harry James Potter. All of the former witnesses were now present having stayed after their testimonies to try and understand what had happened. It had actually been encouraged by the Healers at St. Mungos, a way for the victims to come to terms with the fact that they had been used and manipulated by a person that they trusted. A person that they had believed to be their friend. It was bound to be confusing and disorienting for them but the questioning by the Aurors had helped them and it was clear that they were no longer in denial about what their 'friend' had done.

There were tears running down the faces of Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger. Neville Longbottom and Ron Weasley were glaring at their dorm mate with deep seated rage. Even Luna Lovegood, supposedly noted for her cool demeanor, was staring down at the boy with resentment. All of the children had been questioned for several days before the trial, thoroughly vetted by not only Aurors but Ministry Healers to help them overcome some of the damage this boy had been doing to them.

The painful gag was finally removed but the accused was still bound to the chair.

"Harry Potter, we have heard from several witnesses placing you at the scene of the crime. Many have also testified to your mistreatment at the hands of your muggle relations. Is it true that throughout your childhood you were forced to live, and often locked into, a small cupboard under the stairs?"

The court could see the flush on the boy's face at having to answer these questions about his past but his answer was clear, "yes but how is that my fault?"

"Is it also true that the Dursleys once placed metal bars on your window and locks on your door effectively keeping you a prisoner in your own room?"

Potter looked over at his red-headed friend, who he had already heard relate this particular fact to the court, before answering, "yes they did."

"Were often denied proper food or adequate clothing?"

Potter took in a shaky breath, obviously hating to admit this appalling treatment in front of so many strangers, "yeah I was but I never tortured them because it!"

"Why did you not report your relations to either the Ministry or a teacher at your school?" the prosecutor pressed, "if you had not intended to 'rectify' this situation on your own, why would you not seek help from those who would have given it to you freely?"

Potter's eyes widened and he glared at the man with such an intense and icy gaze that several members of the Court could have sworn that the temperature in the room physically dropped, "so because I didn't complain about it, I must have wanted to kill or torture them? Who was I going to tell? Dumbledore already told you that he knew about it! But that only counts against me too doesn't it? Before this summer the Dursley's never beat me up, and that was only because-"

"That is enough," Decklan snapped and with a snap of his wand Potter was silenced, the loss of composure did not go unnoticed by several court members who were unimpressed by the tactics of the prosecutor, particularly on a minor.

"Minister," Decklan announced changing is voice to one of thinly disguised fake sympathy, "the fact that this boy, a wizard, has suffered cruelly at the hands of mere muggles is undeniable. At this time I ask that I might show the court the full extent of the injuries inflicted by Mr. Potter's uncle?"

Many people looked around in confusion at this request but few could miss the fact that Harry Potter visibly paled in discomfort and perhaps shame.

"Granted," Minister said casually.

"No!" the boy protested, but it was in vain, with a flick of a wand Harry Potter was released from his chains, his seat, and his shirt. He was then forcibly turned towards the court and its witnesses, where several voices gasped and a few- like the muggleborn friend of Potter's- gave a startled sob, at the markings on the boys back. He had apparently been whipped, savagely at that, with a leather belt and his back was a mess of welts and slashes- angry, red and inflamed some of the injuries looked infected and it was evident that the Ministry had refused to heal them so that they could be entered as evidence.

Potter appeared mortified at having himself and his injuries so exposed but he remained silent and collected after his protest had been ignored. "As we can see Potter certainly had motive to want to inflict retribution on the family that should have provided comfort and safety to a boy that desperately needed it. Instead they beat, starved and neglected him. The muggles involved in this case deserve to be held responsible but _nothing_ allows an individual to employ the use of an Unforgivable, and I believe that we are all in agreement that there is no defense for joining the ranks of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named."

"I would never join him!" Potter shouted, once again angry.

"But you did, you bear his Mark, you knew of his intimate plans at the Ministry, you betrayed Severus Snape and the work of the underground organization of the Order of the Phoenix which undermines our defense for the war, and you callously murdered a defenseless squib when your plans were revealed. While I personally have sympathy for your situation Mr. Potter, I never wish cruelty on any child," he said more to the court than to the boy in front of him, "that does not excuse your behavior. There were several other options available to you and instead you chose to use your vengeance as reason to turn on the very people that have supported you. The Wizarding World has always looked upon you with great favor Mr. Potter and you betrayed that trust when you chose to turn to murder and violence."

Potter's eyes turned down and there was true and unmasked sadness in them, "I would _never_ kill Mrs. Figg," he said quietly. "You don't understand, I didn't do it..."

The Court had heard enough, it was regrettable, it was even upsetting to them but the evidence could not be ignored and Potter had provided no reasonable explanation, though no one seemed to notice that he had not been given the opportunity to speak freely of the events. After a single vote the Court found him guilty.

"Harry Potter," Minister Fudge spoke, looking happier than anyone could remember him being for a long time, "the Wizengomot has found you guilty of all charges. Because you are a minor at this time you will be sentenced to life in Azkaban, medium security. At this time do you have any last words for the court- any remorse for your actions?"

Harry Potter looked up and for a moment every member of the Wizengamot had the distinct impression that he was looking them directly in the eye- speaking directly, and only, to them, the effect was mesmerizing and some knew in that instant that this was a moment that they would never forget. His voice was soft and trembled somewhat in fear of his coming sentence, but the words were clear and strong in the silent room, "Someone should look after Mrs. Figgs cats, she doesn't have any family and they mean everything to her. Also…" the boy took a breath and seemed to consider his next words carefully, "Voldemort will use you against each other, just like this. You're all playing right into his hands and you don't even see it. You're all so worried about looking good or protecting yourselves but you never look at the bigger picture- and Voldemort will destroy you all for it. Maybe then you'll realize that I probably could have helped you, if you had let me."

Harry Potter was then dragged out by the Dementors, kicking and struggling the entire time, somewhat diminishing the effect of his strong and determined speech. And still there was that nagging feeling in so many minds that they were missing something, until a witch in the corner- a quiet rather dull woman that never seemed to contribute much in the way of making decisions or leading opinions voiced a thing that everyone else had only registered subconsciously, "Funny," she said, almost to herself, "I've never heard of a Death Eater that's willing to use His name."

 **A/N: One year ago today I published my first story on this site and have enjoyed the process immensely. I haven't finished** _ **Harry Potter and the Awakening Power**_ **but wanted to start with this story that I have been sitting on for a while, though if you have read/are reading my other story you shouldn't worry, I'm still devoting most of time to that as the beginning chapters to this one are largely written and will come out about once week (hopefully).**

 **Those of you wondering what you're getting into: Obviously this is the very unoriginal idea of Harry going to Azkaban at a young age after everyone believes that he has joined the Dark Lord, however, I hope to make this rather unique. The first few chapters will be rather dark as they explore exactly what happens to Harry in Azkaban, a very young man, who is innocent in a prison covered with Death Eaters that know he is innocent and guards that believe him guilty. This is also a time when the Ministry is re-designing the prison for the war and is arresting 'enemies of the state' while they lack of many of the dementors that they have depended on for defense. Not all the dementors abandoned the prison so Harry will still be exposed to them to an extent but they now have to employ a few new ideas as well, and they aren't pleasant.**

 **The other thing to keep in mind is this is NOT a bash the Weasleys/Hermione story and how they turned their back on Harry at the first drop of a hat. They are 16 year old kids that were placed in front of trained Aurors and basically questioned until they truly believe that Harry turned on them and they are immensely hurt by this. Harry was their best friend and they believe that he was leading this double life without ever confiding in them. This is going to be a look at what happens to them without Harry in their lives and how it will affect how they grow up and the lives of the Order. Expect some very different couples and few other surprises.**

 **Hope you all enjoy this and if you do please, please drop a review, I love hearing from people.**


	2. Perfunctory Matters

**Chapter 2: Perfunctory Matters**

 **Harry's POV**

Harry Potter had often believed that he had gotten a raw deal in life. His earliest memories were of not only being neglected at best and at worst being treated with outright violence and cruelty by those that were supposed to love him, but having to watch as the very people that looked at him with nothing but distain, treated their own son with adoration and love. He had tried, when he had been very young, to earn the love of his relatives. He had listened to everything they told him, obeyed their every order, never complained when he had received unequal treatment. The result was that his good behavior had always been ignored and he had been punished again and again for the many wrong-doings of his cousin. He had been told that he was naughty, a liar, and perhaps worst of all- 'born bad'.

Most people would have learned at that time that if good behavior did not pay off, that if you were punished regardless of how you acted, why not at least deserve the punishment? Why not live down to all expectations because if you were going to be punished it should at least be earned. But Harry had not done that. With a resolve that he could not even explain to himself at the time, Harry had always valued doing the right thing, even though it was usually the harder path.

And so despite being the number one target of all of the schoolyard bullies, Harry had always looked after the number two target, often placing himself in the sights of his tormentors just long enough for them to give chase in the infamous 'Harry Hunting' to ensure that no one else had suffered the pains of bruises and cuts from Dudley and his gang. He had always tried to be kind, offering up whatever small things in his possession he might have had to share, even when his efforts had gotten him nowhere. He had never made a friend in primary school.

He had followed all of the school rules and tried to do his best with his school work. He was not a natural student and had no great love for books or maths but as a young boy he had always wanted the approval of just one adult. One person that could have looked at the effort that he had put into one of his school projects and told him 'well done'. He had worked hard on his homework only for Dudley to hand in the same and then accuse Harry of stealing and copying it. He had been held back from many recess sessions for his 'behavior'. It was probably the only thing they had truly taken away from him- as he grew older Harry no longer sought approval from others. He would have liked it, and as often as he tried to deny it, if he was being honest he knew deep down that he actually still wanted it, but he had learned long beforehand that he did not need it nor would he ever receive it. Every teacher he had ever had had claimed that he was nothing more than a troublemaker.

His life had followed with increasing challenges. Entering a world where he was famous but unprepared to handle that fame, he had struggled to find normality in a crazy new world that had at least seemed as though they were offering him the chance for love and acceptance. But instead that world that placed him on a pedestal and had consistently tried with vigor to knock him off of it at every opportunity. He had been accused of crimes that he never committed- being the Heir of Slytherin, entering his name into the Goblet of Fire, lying about the return of Voldemort. Each time he had done nothing wrong, had, in fact, wanted nothing more than to lead a quiet, undisturbed life- but circumstances had forced his hand and pulled him (kicking and screaming) into the spotlight. Each time he had tried to rise above these accusations, and to _not_ rise to the mutterings and rumors that swirled around him, isolating him from his peers and weighing him down with the responsibilities of an adult while having to contend with the restraints of being a child.

And now, after all of his previous trials, he had been sentenced- unjustly- to Azkaban. As Harry heard the bars of his cell clang shut behind him with a reverberation that seemed to signify eternity, he was caught up in a wave of fury at the injustice of it all, it engulfed him so completely that his hands shook and his face burned hot with anger. The room was cold and grey. Years of misery seemed to be embedded in the very walls and a wave of crushing grief and longing for his fallen godfather welled up inside of him. Sirius- who had once been so handsome. So confident and sure that his future would be bright. After twelve years in this prison he had been a mere shell of himself. Wasted away to a gaunt form, hair wild and tangled, eyes dull and haunted. If Sirius, who had been so full of life, had been so much better and stronger than Harry had ever been, had been reduced to such a state, Harry did not stand a chance. Sirius was the person Harry loved the most in the world, the person he admired and he knew that he was not as strong as the man was. Fear rose up in him like a black wave and with it anger returned in full force. Harry had always found anger so much easier to handle than fear.

The worst part was that he was not surprised that the Wizarding World had been so quick to believe him capable of all of the crimes he had been convicted for, they had always been easily swayed into loving or hating him depending on whatever was easier for them in the moment. However, he had not been prepared for the look of betrayal on Hermione's face as the facts of the case were laid out for her on the witness stand and she could not see how Harry could be innocent. He had not been prepared for Mr. and Mrs. Weasley to agree, their eyes shining with hurt and just a hint of new understanding, that their family had in fact been placed in danger again and again since they had started having Harry over. He had never expected Ron to admit to the court that Harry did have a violent temper at times and he supposed that 'Harry must have snapped'.

But the worst had been the Headmaster. Dumbledore, who had always believed in and defended Harry when no one else had. The Dursleys had always blamed him for everything, as had almost everyone else in his life, but Dumbledore had always been prepared to give Harry the benefit of the doubt. To believe that he had not opened the Chamber of Secrets when it must have looked like he had, to believe him when said that Sirius was innocent when there was no proof, or even that he had not entered his name in the Goblet of Fire when there were no other suspects at the time.

But the Headmaster himself had admitted that Harry had hated the Dursleys and could provide no explanation for how he could have had the Dark Mark on his arm without taking it willingly and in secret. Dumbledore had looked at Harry as though seeing him for the first time- as though he was seeing a piece of Voldemort in Harry that he had always wished was not there but knew must be.

It had reminded Harry of that long ago conversation with Tom Riddle as he had stood outside of the diary 'you must have realized the similarities between us.' Harry had denied those similarities for so long, he and Riddle had nothing in common aside from some dark hair and the fact that they were both orphans. Riddle had taken his pain and his anger and turned himself into a monster but not Harry. He had _never_ hurt an innocent person, never had the desire to hurt another person unless they had wronged him and even then it had only been a handful of villains that he had ever truly wished ill upon. He was not like Tom Riddle, it was not fate or even tragedy that had created Voldemort, it had been cold reason and decision and Harry refused to become anything like him.

Which was why the very worst feeling in the world was seeing the people close to him believe otherwise. Dumbledore had hardly looked angry at all, just incredibly disappointed. When Harry had been dragged away amidst yells of outrage, the Headmaster had looked directly at him with stark pity, almost remorseful as though he had always known that it might have come to this but had dearly wished otherwise.

He had been so certain that his friends would stick by him. He was used to the fickle hearts of the rest of the world but as he had sat in the cold lonely holding cell of the Ministry with the Aurors taunting of him about his upcoming conviction, he had never once doubted that Ron and Hermione would defend him. They would know that he, of all people, would never side with Voldemort. Even Ron, who had accused him of entering the Tournament last year, knew that he would never side with the man that had killed his parents. They _knew_ him.

The Aurors had been hard in their interrogation. When he had been arrested he had been alone, confused and scared in the tiny holding cell but they had only used it to their advantage. They had told him again and again that his friends had already confirmed their theories and that he should confess to make things that much easier. ' _We have everything that we need for trial, you're going down and you're going down hard but if you confess and show some remorse. If you explain about those bruises and the fact that the muggles beat you... they might give you a lesser sentence. Make the smart decision here, you only have one chance.'_ Harry had foolishly thought that they were lying to him. He had stubbornly insisted again and again that _his_ friends would never believe that he was a Death Eater. He had never been more wrong.

Every single one of them had betrayed him.

Harry's new home was a small dank cell. There was no color, hardly any light at all in the five by eight area. He could feel the misery of years and years of prisoners embedded into the very walls. Pain and agony was bone deep and Harry knew that this was all he would know for the rest of his life. There would be no escape from it. No second chance when the rest of the world realized their mistake. He was fifteen, still three weeks away from his birthday and this would be the rest of his life. He had once thought of the Wizarding World as his salvation, a rescue from the people he despised and a childhood that would have broken a lesser man, but the truth was darkness seemed to follow him like a plague.

"Harry Potter," an old man that shared the small cell said in a raspy but clear voice. The man was short, with white, thin hair on both his head and face, he was rail thin and rather frail looking, which probably meant that he looked much older than he actually was. Harry wondered how long before he looked old before his time. Would Azkaban give him grey hair before 30? Harry snorted at the wry thought, he was being generous with himself, the way things were going he would be grey by 20.

The man was giving him a critical but intelligent eye before shaking his head in seeming dismay. "The Ministry really has gone insane if they're sending you of all people here."

Harry himself gave the man an assessing look, Harry knew that he had never seen the man before, but this was hardly the first time someone that he had never met had recognized him. He wondered what it was that the man had done to wind up in prison. Harry was not naïve, in spite of his own experience, and hat of his godfather, Harry knew that most of the people locked away deserved to be there. However, he was in medium security rather than maximum, that must mean something. If the man had once been a Death Eater, obviously he hadn't been a very important one as Voldemort had neglected to take him along with the others during his mass breakout the year before and Harry couldn't think of anything else that mattered for the moment.

"Felix Castorline," the man said with a small incline of his head, his accent was posh enough for Harry to guess that the man was Pureblood, or at the least a Half-blood or a Muggleborn that came from good money. "I would say pleasure to meet you but there's no such thing as pleasure in a place like this."

Harry nodded briefly and sat on the cold stone bench that would serve as his bed- for the rest of his miserable life, he reminded himself again, edging himself as far away from his cell mate as possible. "Might as well get friendly boy, we're going to be spending a lot of time together from here on out."

"And what are you in here for?" Harry asked warily. He knew that he couldn't trust this man. Unless the Ministry really did only lock up completely innocent people, than the man was dangerous. The idea of being surrounded by hundreds of insane, blood thirsty criminals made Harry's stomach flip uncomfortably. He had been so terrified of the remaining Dementors that the things that could be done to him by the other prisoners had not fully penetrated his mind yet. He was in Azkaban with murders, Death Eaters and Death Eater sympathizers and he no longer had a wand- his only means of defense.

"Murder," Felix said simply but there was a twinge of regret in his voice. "Unlike you boy, I very much deserve to be here."

"How do you know that I don't?" Harry asked almost defensively.

The man gave him rueful, painful smile. "I could see it on your face. You're right I can't know what happened, you might have done something, who could say, but I've been around long enough to know people and whatever you might of have been done, there was no malice from you. You're not a person that that takes joy from wanting to hurt others so if you did something I would guess that they very much deserved it."

Harry blinked in surprise at such a quick assessment of the situation. His own friends had turned their backs on him and here was this stranger that was willing to believe in him? "And...you are a person that takes joy in hurting others?" Harry asked critically.

The man smiled sadly, "no." He hesitated, not from any desire to hide from what he had done but to more carefully choose his words. "I made a lot of poor decisions. I wish I could call them mistakes but I'm not sure if you can knowingly make mistakes. I knew what I was doing, knew what it would mean to the people I hurt and the families of the people I left behind...and did it anyway. But I was young and I was very, very foolish."

In spite of himself Harry was intrigued. Ever since he had been a small boy at the Dursleys, Harry had always despised people that set out to hurt others. He hated bullies and could never begin to understand the power some people felt by tearing down another person. Life was hard enough without trying to make it worse for others and he drawn the simple conclusions that young boys often did. Some people were good and did the right thing, others were not and would always be self-serving with every decision that they made. He had met Death Eaters before, seen their cruelty, and heard them boast of it with pride- but remorse was something different entirely. He had never believed much that people could change who they were but looking at those sad, pain filled eyes Harry thought that perhaps he had been wrong. "What happened?"

Felix shook his head and gave a rueful smile, "Fifty three years and you're the first person to ever ask me that like you wanted a real explanation." The man shrugged and leaned his head back against the wall, he looked remarkable relaxed for someone leaning up against a cold, stone wall and Harry swallowed he realized that soon he would begin to feel as though this place was normal. "I was a supporter of Grindlewald, I suppose you'll know about him?"

"The dark wizard that Dumbledore defeated, right?" Harry asked in surprise. He had never heard much about Grindlewald and never thought much about the fact that the man's followers could have been still been alive. 53 years and Felix was still in prison.

Felix nodded. His voice was gravelly and he had a thoughtful, almost lecturing tone that Harry associated with his professor's at Hogwarts. "He used to have a slogan…doubt someone your age would know it. It was ' _For the Greater Good_.' That was his explanation. Wizards are given power, endowed with it from birth and with that power….should come the ability to rule. We had... we had a _responsibility_ to set things right. Grindlewald wanted to make a world order with wizards at the top and muggles subjugated beneath them. A world that was guided by the strong so that the weak could not be provoked and frightened into making bad choices, choices that hurt us- witches and wizards," Felix paused and looked at Harry with a bald, open look.

"I believed in him. I thought that I was doing something that was difficult but would, in the end, be just. You see, it was explained so beautifully... rebellion was necessary. The Ministry would never change. The Muggles couldn't change. So we had to act and even though it would be brutal, when it was over it would all be justified. I tortured and I murdered and used my magic to spread fear and terror all in the name of our cause. I cut down Aurors and other wizards that stood in my way that couldn't or wouldn't see what I had saw in Grindlewald. had actually convinced myself at the time that I was on the _right_ side." The man must have caught Harry's look of disbelief mixed with disgust for he gave a rather rueful smile. "I know what you must be thinking. You must find it crazy for a person to do something so wrong and really believe themselves to be in the right." He sighed and seemed to collect himself. "Very few people in this world go about intending to be the villain of the story. Good and bad… it's easier than you think to convince yourself that the line is hard to see. I think young adults, one's who think they're so much wiser than children, convince themselves it's complicated. That there is a lot of grey in the world. When you get to be as old as myself, you realize that children have it right to begin with. Most of it's pretty black and white. The truth was…" and here Felix swallowed and spoke in a raspy whisper. "It was never about justice, I was only justifying my own ambition. My own love for power. And I did it all both willingly and happily. I served Grindlewald- faithfully I admit- for two years.

"However…" Felix paused in his confession and licked his dry lips in thought before he continued, "as time wore on I began to question my cause. If we were better leaders, why did we need to take power by force? If Grindlewald truly wanted a 'Greater Good' why did that always align so perfectly with ensuring his own _personal_ power? I wish I could say that I turned away from him, that I saw the errors of my ways and left on my own accord; that would at least given me some pride in myself. However, I never had the chance to walk away on my own- well no that's not true, I had plenty of time to figure it out sooner but I never worked up the courage to leave before it was too late. He was defeated by Dumbledore on my 21st birthday."

"And you've been in _here_ ever since?" Harry asked looking around the terrible place and feeling some pity for the man in spite of everything that he had done.

Felix shook his head, "No I was very fortunate. I managed to escape. Ran away." He smiled again and Harry could see the irony on the man's face. "I hid in the muggle world. At the time no one was looking for Grindlewald supporters among the very people that they had believed to be so inferior. I thought myself very clever. In the end I only learned that I had been stupid than I could possibly ever know. I learned a lot while hiding. I learned that the people I had been claiming were so beneath me had a whole world that I was painfully ignorant about. I knew nothing of their literature, their science, their technology. I fell in love with that world. A few years later I wound up marrying a muggle woman. My beautiful, perfect Charlotte. She…you're young but have you ever been fortunate enough to fall in love?"

Harry shook his head, still engrossed in the story he was hearing, Felix cursed softly. "I'm sorry for that boy, I think everyone should be given the chance to experience that once in a lifetime kind of love. It changes you, makes you better. It did for me. I became a better person. Actually became a muggle professor of literature and philosophy. Volunteered for charities- I spent 40 years making amends for my crimes. Doing everything in my power to become a person worthy of the love that Charlotte gave me- and she gave me more than I could have ever dreamed of. We had three children, 7 grandchildren. All magical, all comfortable in the muggle world. In spite of everything that I did, I had a very good life, Harry and don't think for a single moment as I sit here I don't appreciate every moment that I stole from my proper penance."

Harry had never met anyone like Felix. Someone that had done terrible things but had gone out of their way to atone for them. He had always seen people as black and white. The Weasleys were good people, Umbridge, Fudge and the Death Eaters bad. Sirius had warned him about this though. The world wasn't split- and while Harry could see Felix's point about actions not having a lot 'grey' about them, he thought that perhaps people did. People did good and bad and it was only at the end of their life that you could truly say whether or not they had a led a good life or not. Harry supposed that part of recognizing that was accepting people for their past misdeeds that they had already suffered for.

"So how did you wind up here after all that?" Harry asked.

Felix's eyes turned sad. "I was careless. After the fall of Grindlewald, like I said I started a new life. I got a new name, changed my appearance, lived in the muggle world for many years. After a while no one was looking for me anymore. Wizards…for people with very long lives we tend to have short memories. We don't like dwelling on things that make us examine ourselves too long or, merlin forbid, too much. Grindlewald was a chapter in the world that was better left closed. Not learned from mind you, we've never been very good at that, but closed. Forgotten. As a teacher of literature and a student of history I confess myself both saddened by this outlook and surprised that I fell into my own trap. Knowing our world as I do, as the years past and my children grew more integrated into the Wizarding World, I became careless. One day a friend of my daughter figured out who I was, she worked for the Ministry and felt that she needed to report me. I told you Harry, I deserve to be here. I escaped justice for 47 years and had a wonderful life because of it. I can't complain that I finally have to pay for my crimes- though I do regret the pain my arrest caused for my children. They were devastated to learn who I really was."

"I'm sure they already knew who you really are even after finding out about your past," Harry said quietly.

Felix looked up at him with surprise, obviously not expecting that answer. "And that brings us to your story, I can't believe you guilty."

"How did you know so quickly?" Harry asked curiously. "My best friends think I'm guilty, how could possibly know just from looking at me?"

Felix looked at him a long time, those sharp, blue eyes taking in every detail possible. "I've lived a long time, not as long as some but longer than others and I've used that time well. I've travelled, I've learned and I've met many, many people in my life. I've learned to read people very well. When I worked under Grindlewald I could see the types that followed him willingly because they believed in his cause, the types that followed him because they were scared, and the types that would resist him to the bitter end. At the time I didn't understand that last one. I was a born Slytherin and we've always had too much self- preservation to have those kind of convictions. I confess, most ashamedly that when I joined Grindlewald I was willing to kill but was very reluctant to actually die- and I imagine in a war you are very much the opposite. Because you have that same look, the one that shows you would go to any length, give every sacrifice to get what you want. I thought I saw it when you first came in but if I had any doubts they disappeared while you listened to an old man's story. A story that you felt compassion for even when I don't deserve it. There's…kindness in you and nobility. Not the kind of thing I've seen in a very long time, not in a place like this."

Harry was surprised that his eyes were suddenly full and he had to blink rapidly to avoid crying in front of this man. After three days in a holding cell, the trial and the trip in the boat to Azkaban he had been called every imaginable name he could think of. Traitor. Murderer. Bastard. Evil. They had torn down his character until he almost believed everything that they said about him. And here was this man saying that he still saw some goodness.

Finally, Harry had someone that wanted to hear his side of the story. Someone that was willing to listen to him and believe him. He took a deep, shuddery breath, determined to get through this tale with dignity. He had begged and he had pleaded with the investigators to tell his side but if he wasn't confessing they didn't want to hear it and the one Auror that had he had managed to tell... had nto been loyal to the Ministry after all. Harry had quite the bruised jaw when the man was done with him and jaw was too sore to move to deny it when the man claimed that he still couldn't get anything from him. Harry had thought that they man would straight out lie about him but apparently there were spells or procedure of some kind to prevent that from happening. Harry wasn't sure what it was but they hadn't managed a false confession from him and though it was small, seemingly hollow victory, Harry was glad for it.

"Voldemort has been after me since before the night he killed my parents," Harry said slowly, and was gratified (if not surprised) that Felix didn't flinch at the name.

"He even went to the Department of Mysteries to get a prophesy made about the two of us. The prophesy was smashed but…" Harry shrugged and thought back over everything that had happened.

"My uncle has always hated me," he said abruptly and Felix looked over sharply at the apparent change in topic. "He hates magic and hates that he has to consider me part of his family. When my parents died I can only imagine the fight that my aunt and uncle got into about keeping me but from the time I was old enough to understand the threat he has always been one step from sending me to an orphanage. He hates having me stay there and I hate being there.

"It was always bad but…this summer…I don't know, something changed. I think he was having trouble at work or maybe he had just had enough of it all. Anyway…" Harry breathed out and prepared himself to admit what had taken place in that godforsaken house. The story that no Auror would listen to and none of his supposed friends had stuck around to hear from him.

"He's never really fed me a lot. Usually when I'm being punished for something but sometimes just because he's a sadistic bastard who gets off on causing pain," Harry was almost surprised at his tone. He had told many people about the Dursleys over the years but never in such blunt terms. Never with the real bitterness that he felt towards them, he had always kept that tighten bound inside himself. "My godfather….Sirius Black….he was killed in the Department of Mysteries. It was partially my fault. Not entirely but he was there because of me and I accept that part of the blame…." Harry breathed out. He knew that he was rambling but this was the first time that he had really gotten a chance to think through everything that had happened and it was a bit of a catharsis to release all these memories.

"I was depressed," He admitted baldly. "So when my uncle told me that he didn't want to even see me in the kitchen until supper time each night, I didn't even complain. He didn't always do that...do the one meal a day thing, not unless he was punishing me for something and I should have thought it was strange but he was always unreasonable. Always looking for ways to prove that I was beneath him in some way and a long time ago I promised myself I would never give him the satisfaction of begging for anything. And worse of all...I wasn't hungry. I would sit in my room and think about my godfather and the fact that the one person that treated me like family, who would always put me first no matter what, was gone. You wanna know the worst part of it?" Harry asked wryly.

"I was just starting to get over it. I mean it still hurt, and I still miss him so much but... he wouldn't have wanted me to just stare out the window and feel miserable. I was just...starting to finally accept it. To feel better for the first time and I was even starting to feel hungry again...but then it was too late. By not eating I grew weak. I had been home for two weeks and that was enough time for me to lose enough weight that I was weak and couldn't really fight back. I didn't realize that that was his plan all along."

Harry paused to collect his jumbled thoughts. The events of the past month were largely a blur. He had been so focused on a threat from Voldemort that he had failed to remember the danger that the Dursleys really presented. After years of their neglect he had grown used to them. In truth…he had underestimated them. Forgotten to be afraid of them. Harry took a breath and continued telling his tale.

"After about a two weeks of rarely eating more than one meal a day my uncle came into my room. He was drunk and he looked as though he was excited but he was also scared out of his mind. He hit me. It surprised me so much that I didn't even try to fight back at first. It wasn't the first time that he's ever hit me or anything but it had never been so out of the blue before. It had always been when I cheeked him or done something that he felt I should be punished for- I'm not making excuses for him," Harry said quickly when he saw Felix's skeptical face.

"My uncle...he's an abusive bastard that as soon as I turned 17 I had planned on never seeing again..." Harry shook his head, "guess that's one thing I don't have to worry about anymore, yeah? But my point is, I never put anything past my uncle when it comes to be awful as possible but I still never thought that he would attack out of no where." Harry let out a shaky breath as he remembered those first shocked filled seconds when he realized that his uncle was well and truly aiming to kill him...or so it had seemed at the time. In truth, the plan had been even more sinister.

"But yeah...he started hitting me and he kept on hitting me. If you'd ever seen my uncle you would know he's not a small man. He was using a belt on my back and I was practically unconscious when he dragged me out to his car. It was the middle of the night at this point and no one was around to see. I didn't know at the time but he had made a deal with some Death Eaters. Even when he dragged me out of the boot of the car and some men gave him a bag of muggle money I didn't make the connection…and he gave them me. And then I saw their forearms and I knew what had happened. They cursed me, dragged me off to some secret spot where Voldemort branded me with the Dark Mark. Then he stole some of my hair and stole my wand."

"You had a wand on you the whole time? Why didn't you use it against your uncle when he attacked you?" Felix asked sounding shocked at this revelation.

Harry shook his head, the Death Eaters had played him perfectly. "It's always in my pocket, in case of an emergency," Harry couldn't help but add ironically, "but I would never use it against my muggle uncle or _**that**_ would have gotten me trouble with the law, right? I was almost expelled from Hogwarts last year for using a Patronus Charm against a pair of Dementors so I knew better than to use magic unless it was absolutely life or death. Like I said the first couple of punches took me complete surprise and then I started to struggle but again I didn't think...I thought he was just knocking me around a bit and then he would let me go. I tried to fight back physically, I punched, I kicked, I lost three nails trying to claw his skin off. That's why I think he was so careful not to feed me much. He wanted me weak. Vernon outweighs me about ten stone...and that's not an exaggeration so I never stood a chance. By the time it reached a point where I was actually fighting for my life, where I was convinced that he was really gonna kill me... I couldn't move. It helped that on top of everything else I hadn't been sleeping much either."

Felix shook his head in commiseration, "it was a good plan. What happened after that to land you in here?"

"Voldemort has the same wand core as me…brother wands I think they're called. Instead of sending one of his Death Eaters, he used the disguise on himself so there would be no question that the wand would respond the right way. He tortured the Dursleys and killed Mrs. Figg. He even resisted arrest when the Aurors came by throwing some really nasty jinxes their way- ones that were meant to cause pain, but then allowed himself to get arrested. Went down pretty easy from what I understand since the Aurors were keen to brag about it to me. Then they confounded this Auror, Dawlish, and when he was confused, switched out Voldemort with me in the holding cell. Vernon had beaten me, and I had the Dark Mark. Both of those could be proven with forensic spells since his sweat and even blood were on me and someone in the Ministry spread the 'rumor' that the Dark Mark has to be taken willingly- I promise you it doesn't. They thought that it was an open and shut case. Voldemort not only got rid of me but destroyed my reputation. And no one even questioned for a second that I had done it."

Felix had been quite silent throughout Harry's whole tale, something that Harry was incredibly grateful for. It felt good to say the whole thing out loud. To appreciate- just for a moment- that the plan had been very good. It was a strange thing to take comfort in it but the better the plan the less he could be upset with his friends...former friends now though Harry had not yet wrapped his head around that fact...for giving up on him so easily.

"I'm sorry lad, they played you well and good. It's a shame that no one could stand up for your innocence but the Ministry can be narrow sighted in their quest for what they see as justice. It's a strange thing to realize that the way of life that you have fought for, killed for, and destroyed a part of your soul for- is actually quite wrong. The Ministry of Magic is a corrupt body of old men that are more worried about preserving their own wealth, status, and traditions than for looking to the future of our world. I have long since learned that I was wrong to try and establish the kind of world Gellert Grindlewald wanted, especially in the way I went about it, but I was never wrong that our world needs drastic change."

In that moment, Harry couldn't agree more.

HPHPHPHPHP

It was past midnight when Severus Snape walked through the small kissing gate at the entrance to the cemetery. Nearly 15 years and he had never before been able to bring himself to visit her. He had not wanted to see her like this. The cold marble. Her name forever etched next to that of James Potter. When he thought of her- rarely these days- he steadfastly refused to think of graves and corpses. Instead he remembered her vibrant smile. Her deep, throaty laugh. Lily Evans had been the liveliest person he had ever known. She had had a passion and enthusiasm for life that had been unparalleled. To have such a life cut down at the age of 21 was a cruelty beyond anything a mere Death Eater could have imagined unleashing on the world.

He found the grave more quickly than he thought he would.

" _The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."_

It was bold and easy to read and Severus could not think of a more inappropriate phrase to encompass such an extraordinary woman. A wall of rage seemed to well up in him as he wondered what moronic person had had the audacity to put it there. Then again…nothing was suitable for her.

He stared as those words, those final, cold sentiments of a life that would never reach the potential that Severus had seen in her. Lily Evans, the greatest witch of her generation, of that Severus had been certain of from the age of eleven, had never gotten to do all of the things she had dreamed of doing, and he knew that she had dreamed of so many, many things. Travelling abroad, learning a new language, studying Masteries in both muggle and wizarding subjects, skydiving without magic. All of those dreams gone in a single burst of green light.

"Lily…" he breathed out. For a summer night the air was surprisingly cold and his breath wisped out in front of him. Ghostly in the graveyard. "I'm sorry Lily. For so many things. For _everything_. I have regretted every choice I ever made in regards to you the moment that you died. I should have chosen you, I should have chosen you every single time and every time I chose power. I chose Slytherin House over trying to be Sorted with you, I chose to befriend those that would hate and torment you, I chose to serve the Dark Lord. And all because I was so certain that if I became strong enough or successful enough you would want what I would be able to offer you. It never...I never realized until it was too late that I would be offering you something that you never wanted. I should have been a better man, a man that you would have wanted to choose for yourself and when I couldn't do that... I should have made amends but… I could never bring myself…" he took another shaky breath. By the time he had even considered the fact that he had gone about things all wrong the prophesy had been made and their fates already sealed. Everything he had done to try to protect Lily after the prophesy had been delivered to the Dark Lord...it had all been in vain.

Severus was not used to speaking to the dead. He had made the arrangements for his father's funeral with a single letter and had never bothered even attending the funeral much less seeing or visiting the grave. His mother he had afforded more respect to, making sure she had had a nice service and her favorite flowers but after she had been properly interred into the ground he had never found it necessary to reopen old wounds. The dead were gone and no amount of mourning or carrying on would change that.

Lily was different though. He had stayed away from her grave not out of indifference but rather an intense fear. It was hard to describe even to himself the feelings of guilt her death still brought to him even after all these years. But he knew that today…today she needed to hear this from him. It was a fact that had surprised him. Never before had he felt compelled to speak with her in such a personal manner but once the idea had come to him, it had seized him with uncommon certainty. The moment the verdict had been read out in the courtroom he had felt an overwhelming urge to speak to Lily. To explain, as best as he was able, what had happened to the son he had once promised to protect. To explain that he had failed her yet again.

"I promised you that I would look after him. I failed you. I… I don't know what happened Lily. Potter..." he cleared his throat and for the first time in his memory he found this to be wrong title for the boy. "Harry…" he corrected with a whisper. He took a few moments to collect his thoughts.

"I've never known what to think about death. Is there an afterlife? Are you just gone forever? If I think about my own life, I certainly hope it just ends. My original life was insufferable enough, I hate to imagine it lasting an eternity but for you…

"Lily you deserve an eternity of happiness and it is my single greatest hope that you have found it. Perhaps wherever you are you've finally come to your senses and you never have to see Potter again," he grumbled, unsure if his little joke made him feel better or just guilty. "I don't know what to think about death but if there is some kind of afterlife then I hope you didn't have to watch what happened at the trial today. Your son…" he swallowed.

He had never liked Harry Potter, first for being the spitting image of James Potter, second for being the reason his precious Lily was dead, and finally for the boy himself. In the five years he had known him, Severus had yet to find a redeeming quality.

"Your son… he was sent to Azkaban. They say he's a Death Eater and that he killed Arabella Figg. That he tortured your awful sister and her beast of a husband. If the last part is true the only thing I can think is… they deserved worse. I always knew that Petunia is a been a terrible excuse for a person and it came as no surprise that her husband is even worse, but I never imagined they would have tortured him the way that they did. I never imagined...if even half what they say about how they treated your son is true…" Severus took a breath.

He was not one to pity others, especially those that did not need it. Potter had survived his childhood, just as he had survived his own. It changed nothing of who the boy was or what had happened over the last five years between the two of them to know that Potter had been abused. Severus admitted to himself that the boy was made of stronger stuff than he had once thought when he heard about the kind of childhood he had been forced to endure and seen the evidence of the abuse on his back. He had always thought the boy spoiled and arrogant, but spoiled at least was not an adjective to describe him. Severus would not pity the boy... but it did force him to rethink his image of him.

However, the thought of Lily having to know what her awful sister had done to her precious son was like a physical pain for him. Lily would have been devastated to learn that even after her death the sister she had tried her best to love had never been able forgive Lily for unforgivable sin of being born a witch. Severus cleared his throat.

"That's not all, they also believe that he was the one that betrayed me to the Dark…to Him. My position as a spy is ruined, I will never be able to help the Order in the war. My debt to you..." Severus shook his head, there was nothing to be done for it. Besides, it was irrelevant, his promise had been to protect her son, something he had already failed in doing one way or another. He had not been there to protect the boy when he had been a small child locked in a cupboard, and he had not been there when the boy had supposedly cracked under the abuse and turned violent and dark.

He had spent several sleepless nights going over and over everything that he knew. He still remembered that feeling of surprise and shock when Draco had rushed headlong into his private lab, babbling in a panic that the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters knew. They knew that he had been working against him. Knew that he was a spy for Dumbledore and they would be coming for him.

At first he had been convinced that the boy was exaggerating. Bellatrix and others had been suspicious of him for months and yet Severus had always managed to allay those fears. And then Draco had told him that it had been Potter that had betrayed him. That Potter had betrayed the Order and that the first piece of information had been that Severus Snape was a spy, and then Draco had gone on to give exacting information about how Severus had alerted the Order following finding Potter and his little sidekicks in Umbridge's office. His first response had been anger. The foolishness vindictiveness of it all. Potter would have him killed for a stupid, petty grudge?

And then fear. He had been summoned and was about to leave. Had he left to go to the Dark Lord's side...he would be dead. Draco had reached him just in time. The pain in his left arm when he did not appear at his former master's feet had taken away any doubt of remaining in the man's confidence. It had taken a very special salve that Severus had invented personally to handle the fallout of his decision.

It had only been hours later that he had questioned himself. 'Would Potter really have done it?' The boy hated him, that much was clear, but he was also unquestioningly on Dumbledore's side. The boy would never do anything to jeopardize their chances in the war. Of all of the infuriating traits that Potter possessed the most dominate was his sheer stubbornness. The boy did not give up. He had spent his entire First Year tracking down the Philosopher's Stone with single-minded determination and dragging his two little side-kicks along for the ride. He had seen the boy continue Quidditch games through bucking broomsticks, runaway bludgers and hurricane-like conditions. While the other students had looked miserable and resigned to a terrible fate when placed in such conditions, Potter always had a nearly maniacal glint of determination. As though Mother Nature herself had conspired against him and he refused to let her win out of sheer vindictiveness. Would that same boy turn really change sides so easily? There could have been other ways for the Dark Lord to discover his treachery after all.

Two days later Potter was apprehended by Aurors for torturing his relatives and they had discovered the Dark Mark on him.

"I don't know what to think Lily. The Ministry certainly believes him to be guilty, but that hardly means anything. But his own friends also testified against him. Gryffindors to the end but everyone of them believes that he is guilty. _Dumbledore_ believes it and you should know that that is the most damning of all, that old fool has always believed in him when no else did. All of the evidence points to him Lily…"

He breathed out again, unsure why he was so reluctant to see what everyone else saw. He had never felt this way before. Honestly his reluctance to accept the boy's guilt surprised him. He felt as though he had slipped into what the muggles might call 'The Twilight Zone'. In the past _he_ had always been the one to see the worst in the boy. He had never made excuses for his behavior, never saw him as a celebrity, never gave him second chances when they weren't deserved. He had been claiming loudly for years that the Wizarding World had blinders on when it came to the boy.

But in essence that was the problem. He knew what that boy was capable of. He had watched over him as closely as possible, and with that careful thought in mind Severus felt like he knew Harry Potter well enough to know that there were some things he would never do.

"He is so very much James' son, Lily. He is arrogant, in spite of childhood he is arrogant. He has never once thought out a plan before leaping into action. He is hopelessly naïve when it comes to placing total trust in those close to him. But his eyes Lily… today they looked so much like _your_ eyes."

He was silent for a few minutes. "I didn't testify." It was a weak excuse and he flushed slightly in an odd sort of embarrassment for trying to justify his actions to a woman that he been dead for so many years. "They asked me to. They wanted to show the jury that losing me as a spy was a blow to the war effort but…I remembered my promise to you and I couldn't bring myself to help get him convicted. At least that was what I told myself at first but the more I think about it…"

He rubbed a tired hand over his face, once again going over the facts. Severus Snape was not a man used to not understanding what was going on around him. He prided himself on being a cut above everyone else. He was logical and practical. He saw what others did not.

"I think he might be innocent Lily. It might be the dumbest thing I've ever said, and I have no reason to doubt what everyone else believes but…I think he might be innocent. And for the first time since you died I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to do. Merlin help us all if they locked that boy up for the wrong reasons."

 **A/N: Thank you so much to those that decided to follow and favorite this story, it's much appreciated. Sorry for the delay in putting out the second chapter.**

 **Just wanted to say that kinda from necessity the first few chapters in the story are a little heavy on OC characters but for those that really don't them, I promise that they will be drastically cut down once Harry is reunited with the Order. There are a couple that stick around but the focus of the story will revolve around the characters that we all know and love so don't get too frustrated quickly. There's just not a lot of other people for Harry to interact with in Azkaban, especially since this happens after Fifth Year where all the DEs we all love to hate have already escaped.**


	3. Dark Days in Hell

**Chapter 3: Dark Days in Hell**

Time in Azkaban is a terrible thing. It progresses slowly. Barely moving at all and yet at the same time every passing day was only a reminder of time wasted in your life. Another day without sunshine. Or warmth. Without someone to care whether you lived or died. Another day you'll never get back again.

When Voldemort's resurrection was discovered at the Department of Mysteries the Second Wizarding War officially begun and the first defectors of the old regime were the Dementors of Azkaban. For years they had been confined to a tiny island and forced to feed on a weak population of increasingly sick people that had little joy to begin with and little left of themselves at all after little more than a year of imprisonment, that is they lasted that long. A few stayed behind, supposedly out of loyalty though even the Ministry was not blind to the fact that it was simply convenient with so many others gone to not have to fight to feast on souls.

With the majority of the Dementors gone, the prison that Harry entered started to operate quite differently than it had for the past several centuries when there were few if any human guards present. In theory these changes would have been positive and very welcome. Prisoners, from what Harry came to understand, had more interaction with one another then they had ever had in the past. They were to move from cell to cell, which granted them more movement than many had had in years. For years, men had suffered mental torture day in and out for years at a time with almost no human companionship. If Harry had been able to ask Hermione, she would have been able to tell him that in the muggle world solitary confinement alone was often considered inhuman and cruel as it severely damaged a person's mind. Add in the effects of Dementors and most muggles would have thought wizards truly horrific monsters for issuing such a punishment to anyone, no matter how terrible their crimes. For many prisoners, the change meant that they were given the first real companionship they had seen for years. For many it was far too late to correct the damage that had already been done.

For Harry, these changes were downright dangerous. As the Wizarding World's former hero, being an inmate in a maximum security prison, no matter what he had been convicted of doing, did not endear him to his fellow prisoners. In the muggle world, his circumstances would have been considered and he would have been removed from the 'general population' and put in a more protected environment, but again, no one was there to explain that to Harry. The irony of course being that there were more than enough real Death Eaters and sympathizers to know that Harry was innocent...the only ones that knew or cared and they were more than willing to make Harry suffer for his _real_ alliegances.

They were creative and persistent in their punishment towards him. Especially in the first few weeks and months of his sentence, Harry felt as though each day could be his last. He was the youngest prisoner, not to mention the smallest and, as reluctant as Harry was to admit it even to himself- the weakest. Without his wand and with the spells within the prison walls that contained any kind of flair of accidental or wandless magic there was no hope of defense. Harry knew that one day the prisoners would take their treatment towards him too far and end up killing him. After a while, it wasn't a scenario he was particularly opposed to anymore. What did he have to look forward to? His friends had abandoned him, the Wizarding World had quickly turned its back on him. No one visited, no one questioned the verdict or his guilt. He was sentenced for life without parole. They only thing he had left at all was the pain, fear and humiliation that they subjected him to. Acts that he had been too naïve at the time of his sentencing to even consider…

When Harry wasn't dealing with physical torture of the other prisoners, he was still forced to endure the mental torture of the remaining Dementors, who now spread their patrols into rotating shifts so that each level spent certain days with the prisoners. On Harry's floor, one of the medium security levels, Dementors were present twice a week. Tuesdays and Fridays- all day long. It was as though he were living in an actual nightmare. That constant feeling of pain, of cold- bitter, bone chilling cold- of all consuming misery. In some ways it was worse having the time spent with the Dementors staggered the way that it was because he was given just enough time to get his senses back before he was subjected to their treatment again. There wasn't quite enough time for him to lose his mind. Perhaps if he had managed insanity it would have been a nice fantasy, instead of the horrors of his reality.

There were so many memories….His mother's terrified screams, Cedric's blank eyes, facing Voldemort and what he was sure was his own certain death, the isolation of Fifth year, Sirius dying…his trial. The proximity of the Dementors also made the connection in his scar more prominent. He felt that he finally understood what Dumbledore had been explaining to him in his office after the Department of Mysteries. The thing that protected him from Voldemort was love. The ability to care for others and have them return that love. Voldemort couldn't stand being near such emotions which meant that when Harry was feeling particularly affectionate, or compassionate, or even if he felt grief- not misery and pain but loss of someone or at least something truly loved- the connection was lessened.

There was no love in Azkaban.

Night after horrifying night- with Dementors or without, it made no difference- Harry was forced to see Voldemort torture his victims. Watch helplessly as he planned his attacks on those that Harry cared about and had once cared about him. He could do nothing.

He had tried- at first- to tell some of the Aurors that were now in charge of patrolling the corridors. They had thought that he was either lying or delusional- either way their response was to beat him so badly that he could barely move afterwards. He learned quickly to keep his mouth shut.

That was the other source of Harry's misery. Aurors. There were times, increasingly far between as time went on, when he thought back to when he had once wanted to be one of them and wanted to curse himself for his naiveté. There were three sets of four full time guards for each floor. They had been given the assignment because they were not as good at fighting as the other Aurors but had still passed with the bottom qualifying mark. The only thing they seemed to excel at was cruelty. They delighted in punishing the prisoners, viciously cutting them down with hexes and curses that if done in the light of day would have seen them on the other side of the bars. They liked to think of it as giving 'dirty criminals' the punishment that they were no longer able to receive full time from the Dementors.

At first there were just casual instances of cruelty. They would punch a man too hard when he wouldn't follow an order, or they would use their wand to command obedience or what they might have thought was respect. Felix was the one that explained it best to Harry, they were insecure men that felt powerful by going after people that they felt that they were better than. Harry wasn't sure if understanding the motive made it any easier to take. However, as time went on the cruelty grew sharper. They would beat a man for longer, curse him with stronger hexes with less guilt in their eyes. They had grown used to getting away with small offences and as more of them did it, the less wrong it all seemed. Felix informed Harry that this was human nature as well... the taste for violence and the progression it takes once started. As a person grew increasingly desensitized to violence and seeing others in pain, they would be driven to do worse. To start to crave it.

The worst came though after only a few of months into his sentence. Harry learned that Fudge had been replaced as Minister of Magic. It seemed the Minister's last great ploy had been Harry's imprisonment. He had meant for Harry to be a scapegoat for all of his crimes. To make the public so angry and feel so betrayed by him that they would forget that their leader had done nothing against the threat of Voldemort for a year despite all warnings. Fudge may have succeeded in making Harry nothing more than a mockery of his former fame, but he had not managed to reverse his own image as well. Rather than thank him for capturing the Dark Lord's 'Heir', many blamed Fudge for Harry turning dark in the first place. Fudge had been careless and allowed Voldemort not only to return but to claim their greatest weapon as his own. It did not take long for Fudge to be thrown out of office in utter disgrace and humiliation.

The new Minister was a young, energetic man named Ivan Tyson. He had risen through the Ministry for the past 15 years, developing a reputation for getting things done and making people happy while doing them. Some went so far as to call him a young Albus Dumbledore when it came to his vision for a new brighter age for the Wizarding World. It was true that he would never have the elderly Headmaster's raw magical power, but then few did and those that might have...they were often considered too dangerous for positions of power anyway.

What Tyson lacked in magical power, he more than made up for in political capital and popular support. As the witches and wizards of their world panicked over the return of the Dark Lord and the betrayal of their savior and became convinced that there was no hope for them without someone to rescue them, Tyson was cool in the face of crisis. He was calm and decisive in all of his decisions, knowing how to prioritize tasks that mattered and at the same time careful not to slight seemingly unimportant but influential departments and people in the Ministry.

From what Harry learned later from overheard conversations and scraps of news, the new Minister had come into office with overwhelming support for his New Order, as he was now calling his administration. He wanted to make sweeping changes to 'ensure the continued safety of all innocent witches and wizards'. He increased both recruitment and advanced training for Aurors. He increased availability of Defense courses for ordinary citizens as well as employing curse breakers and warders to place new or enhanced protective enchantments around all public areas as well as even many private homes when called on for help. New systems for alarms were implemented for when there were attacks to give better response times. Public support rallies were held to increase morale and unite the people behind the Ministry. Alliances were being built between wizards and various magical creatures and envoys had been sent back to the giants to help re-negotiate. It was _everything_ Fudge should have done from the start and it was becoming clear that Dumbledore's words at the end of Harry's Fourth Year had been prophetic. Fudge was now known as the man that had stood aside and would have allowed Voldemort to destroy their world, but Tyson would soon be remembered as one of the greatest Ministers they had ever known.

However, there was more to the New Order than the average witch or wizard would ever know. Peace, Tyson knew, did not come peacefully. It came with violence and sacrifice and most of all it came with secrets. Secrets that the public could never know because it wouldn't make them feel _good._ The Ministry was fighting against the Dark Lord because he was evil. Good vs Evil- that is what the fight was about and that was the narrative that Tyson was determined to stay with. The average person never needed to know that in order to defeat evil, one needed to commit acts of evil.

They need never know that there were Aurors carrying out special assassinations against enemies without bothering with a trial. There was no need to explain that the Ministry had officially taken control over the _Daily Prophet_ but had chosen to remain a 'silent' partner. And later, Harry would learn, that there would be no need to ever tell anyone about the new training regime that Tyson himself had authorized in order to best train not simply his Aurors but an army.

By Ministry order all convicted Death Eaters, both going forward and those already serving sentences, were officially rebranded as 'Enemies of the State' which meant that the rules of engagement under the law were altered. It became practice to use prisoners as little more than training dummies for new recruits, and with larger recruitment classes than ever there were plenty of people to train. Third Year Auror candidates were expected to practice interrogation, capture and torture techniques on any prisoner that were labeled as Enemies- all of whom had life sentences, none of whom would never be able to tell anyone of what happened.

Harry quickly became their favorite target. As their former hero, someone who had once been known to stand up to 'You-Know-Who' himself, the chance to break the boy that had betrayed them just when the war had become public had become irresistible. One of the things the Aurors became most adept at was getting confessions from the prisoners. And of course Harry was too proud (or too stupid) to allow them to break him- at least not entirely. He knew that they had managed to chip away at more of him than he would ever want to admit. Even once proud Lucius Malfoy, who had sneered and mocked them when the new recruits had first come had admitted to many of his crimes. Not all- Harry at least suspected- but many. But Harry was not a liar, as the scars on the back of his hand from the first time he had crossed the Ministry proclaimed, and he would not confess to crimes that he had not committed, not even to save himself from further torment. Not when the next class would just start in all over again. After all, the confessions were meaningless, they only served to bolster confidence in fighters that had never faced real Death Eaters- or least not ones that were bloody and wandless. When Harry refused to confess to the murder of Mrs. Figg or the torture of his relatives it only drove the future Aurors to new sadistic levels of fury against him. Still with an innate stubbornness that seen Harry through every other misery in his life he refused to lie, beg or plead for mercy from those who would never grant him any.

Harry had thought that he had known what cruelty was. Growing up with the Dursleys, surviving Umbridge's reign, and witnessing all of the acts of horrors perpetrated by Voldemort- he had not believed it possible for him to be shocked- he had been wrong.

For over two years they attacked him with unrelenting fervor. They beat him, cursed him, and humiliated him- stripping him of any shred of dignity that he had once held dear. What they would never know was that they had come very close indeed to stripping him of his very humanity.

He hated them. All of them.

The Ministry had done what Voldemort and the Dursleys had failed to do after years of trying- they had stripped him of his hope. Day after agonizing day Harry felt nothing but pain, he heard nothing except for the screams and wails of people that he should despise and could now not even pity…one cannot remain unchanged. One cannot face such obstacles and _not_ be affected. Bitterness grew in Harry's heart daily.

He would have fought for them, he would have died for these very people had they simply asked it of him. Harry would have given everything he had to defeat Voldemort and yet the Wizarding World threw his loyalty and devotion away. They took a boy who could have been- would surely have _tried_ to have been- their greatest champion, and made him see that good and evil were a choice to be made daily. It was not enough to say that Voldemort was worse so the rest deserved to live and do as they pleased. Men in commit evil in the name of good did just as much damage as those that never tried to justify their reasons in the first place.

It wouldn't be for many years when Harry would look back on this time and realize that he could have easily lost himself completely and if he had, he surely would have become a monster. He could have allowed the hate to consume him. He could have vowed to destroy everyone and everything that had conspired to hurt him. Unlike Ivan Tyson, whose power came from the will of the people, Harry was in fact a powerful wizard. One locked and chained, one that might never reach the potential he could have had if only given a fair chance in the world, but powerful nevertheless.

If he day had come when could have unleashed his fully fury on them, the Wizarding World might very well have burned.

However, as Harry had learned time and again, fate was tricky and it had not left him utterly abandoned. Harry's cellmate was to become his salvation. Felix Castorline had been deemed too old and frail for most the Auror's 'practice sessions'- this did not entirely excuse him from them all, but he was not abused on an almost daily basis the way that Harry was and as a result was able to still talk or at times even tend to Harry's wounds when they were particularly bad.

Being cellmates the two of them had endless hours to spend together- roughly 17 hours, including sleep (which neither one of them got very much of anyway). Harry had grown fond of the elderly wizard that had worked so hard and for so long to atone for his crimes. Even at times when the guards went for the feeble man, Harry would taunt them until they went for him instead, unsure if the elderly man could take their brutality and survive. Harry had always had a 'saving people thing' as Hermione had once told him, there were few opportunities but Felix gave Harry a reminder of the person he once was... the type he had always wanted to be. Just as men can grow accustomed to violence, they can also forget compassion unless they get to practice it. Harry saved Felix's body but in time Harry would feel as though Felix had saved his soul.

In repayment for his kindness, Felix lectured Harry on everything that he had ever learned, both muggle and magical. And Felix had learned a lot. The man had a wealth of knowledge, all memorized verbatim from a thousand different texts and a half a dozen different languages. His quiet but calming voice eased Harry's battered mind after a round of torture and a night plagued with murderous visions.

Sometimes Felix would ask Harry questions about what they had discussed, whether it was a Shakespearean play that Felix had recited all the parts to, or a potion that he had described from start to finish. Harry would answer the questions as though he was being quizzed for a school test and it kept his mind agile. Or at least focused on something other than pain or memories. However, most of the time Harry would just listen, allow the words to wash over him and give himself something else to think about besides the horrors of his life. After so many months of torture and exposure to the Dementors, it had become difficult for him talk and almost impossible for him to concentrate for any period of extended time.

Harry knew that he was slowly losing his mind but strangely what had once been one of his greatest fears was slowly becoming quite comforting. The real world was filled with nothing but pain- physical, mental and emotional- and so it started becoming harder and harder to stay present. He would start to drift in on himself- staring out at grey walls into a scene of his own creation- and then Felix's voice would pull him back. Sometimes he wondered if he wanted to come back at all...

HPHPHPHP

 **November 10, 1998**

Maggie Clark was quickly regretting her career choice.

She had wanted to be a Healer since the age of 13 when she had been trapped in the hospital wing for a solid week from a runaway potion's experiment and had witnessed Madame Pomfrey perform some truly remarkable magic. Actually it had been more than that- it was as though Maggie had been witnessing the impossible in action. The matron had fixed aliment after mysterious aliment and had done it all with a kindness and warmth that Maggie had truly admired.

She had done well at Hogwarts, receiving top grades in both her Potions and Charms NEWTS, she had graduated at the top of the Healer training program at St. Mungos and had received good reviews during her residency at the same hospital. Now, at the age of 24, she was finally working in the field, completely on her own.

Her first assignment- Azkaban prison.

She had been there for only one week and she was absolutely certain that it had been the worst in her life. There were exactly two things about the job that made it at all tolerable: there was a direct floo from the Ministry to her office- security reasons forbade any other location to connect to Azkaban- so she didn't have to travel by boat. And the fact that the surgery wing was also protected by a Patronus-like charm that kept the effects of the Dementors at bay so there was also that small kindness to consider. But that was the best that could be said about the position.

The position itself was a new one. While there had been _technically_ a former Healer for Azkaban, it was quickly established that the man did little to nothing in the way of helping his 'patients'. Prior to two years ago the Dementors had run the island which meant that there was no real medical care available. Once the Aurors took over a post had been established but rarely used as most people had been of the opinion that the prisoners had survived well enough in the past without Healers, there was no need to change policy, particularly when conditions in the prison were better than ever with the Dementors gone.

When Maggie had been approached by an official that was high in the New Order Administration to help revitalize the hospital wing of the island, she had been honored. Her excellent class ranking, as well as her reputation for professionalism as well as discretion had made her their top choice, the man had confided to her. It was only after several magical contracts ensuring nondisclosure of sensitive materials that she was told what no civilians were ever informed about. The Auror Training Program.

At first, Maggie had been horrified to learn that the Ministry was using human being as little more than target practice. She had voted for Tyson and had been thrilled with the changes he had made over the past 2 years and she had been shocked to see a man who was known for his fairness and vision for the future would condone such a thing. Her supervisor, Mr. Osborn, a Ministry official in charge of overseeing the Aurors and the Program, made her understand differently. They were at war, and without proper training they would lose. These were criminals that had broken the law. They had murdered, they had conspired with a terrorist to bring down their very way of life. Punishment was both just and necessary, and if the rest of them could benefit from it, wasn't it all for the Greater Good.

She had reluctantly agreed to fulfill her obligations, still uncertain about the methods that were being employed at the prison but Mr. Osborn had promised her that the concept was far more terrifying than the reality. The prisoners weren't cursed out of malice or just to inflict pain, but instead only to enhance the Aurors skills. Precautions were taken to ensure that no one was hurt to greatly, which was why they needed more medical staff. To help treat not only their physical ailments but their mental afflictions as well. Tyson himself had made that provision when he had agreed to go forward with the program under his advisors recommendations- Mr. Osborn had promised her this. Confidentially, he had also told her, the Aurors had gotten a bit 'carried away'. In the 26 months since the start of the program 67 of the 287 available prisoners had been killed during one the trainees 'sessions', and apparently most of the other prisoners were not far from following.

Maggie had arrived to find that the exam room was filthy. On her first day it had taken her five hours and 2 house-elves borrowed from her parents and her aunt to properly sterilize the area. They were also dangerously under-supplied. She had reordered stock of everything in triplicate the first morning and realized halfway through the week that she had drastically underestimated what she was going to need to care for these people.

The job had seemed reasonable, she had even felt charitable about it considering that no one else had been prepared to help convicted criminals. She had felt very bad for them when he arrived- no matter the reasoning behind it, she couldn't help but feel that torture seemed like a terrible thing for their government to condone, even when used against someone that had done terrible things. She had come into the position with every intention of providing not only medical care but compassion and reassurance to her patience as well.

However, she had quickly learned to curb any and all feelings of kindness toward the men and women in her care. Violent criminals bent on destroying anything in their path- including her. Three had tried to kill her in this first week alone. She would have thought that with some of the wounds and aliments that they had been suffering from they would have been glad to finally have someone that was willing to tend to them. Apparently they cared little for kindness.

An Auror was always present in the room and the inmate was restrained to the table in the exam room but they still managed to make her skin crawl with the comments they made, still tried to grab at her, threaten her- terrify her. And she was only trying to help them! In her most uncharitable moments, it made her wish that every last one of them had received the Dementor's Kiss. Which only made her more upset with herself, on top of terror and disgust she felt at her job, now she also felt pains of guilt.

"We haven't scared you away yet?" a tall, dark haired man with broad shoulders and an easy, nearly carefree smile on his face asked from the doorway.

Maggie turned with a braver smile than she first thought she would be able to manage to her friend Daniel Myer, "not yet- though I would be shocked if I made it the whole month."

Daniel smiled easily and stepped forward, "believe it or not it does get a bit easier. Once you get used to it, I mean."

Maggie grimaced, "I think I would have to start worrying about my own sanity if I start thinking that way. Speaking of- do you realize that I've conducted 48 exams this week and I haven't found a single sane person in the bunch? Not one! What am I supposed to tell the Minister?"

Daniel chuckled, "I think you need to re-evaluate what you're considering sane around here, Mags. We're not in Kansas anymore."

Maggie frowned, "Muggle reference?"

Daniel grinned and nodded, "as always. Your father was muggleborn, Mags! Your name is Clark, don't you ever feel just a bit ashamed for never knowing what I'm talking about?"

Maggie smiled and shook her head, "I wouldn't be advertising that you're a muggleborn around here, Danny-boy. These people will kill you for it."

Daniel shrugged good-naturedly, "They would kill me just as easily for being an Auror in the first place."

"Don't be getting ahead of yourself now, you're still in the training course, you don't graduate for another 4 months."

Daniel waved this aside, "Details," he grinned before looking at her with a more critical eye, "honestly though- how are you doing? I know this place can really get to you to after a while."

Maggie let out a frustrated sigh, "I've only been here a week. Is it too soon to start flooing in sick?"

"Around here? Never. Though for today I would just concentrate on the fact that in eight hours it's the weekend and that we're going to get so drunk that you won't even remember this place."

Maggie laughed and playfully swatted at her best friend of nearly 15 years. Ever since they had been sorted into Ravenclaw together at Hogwarts she and Daniel had been inseparable and in spite of everything she was glad that he was there to make things easier for her.

"How many do you have today?" Daniel asked.

Maggie frowned over her files, "10 today. Medium security. Are they any better than those complete nutters in high level?"

Daniel grinned at the frankness of her question combined with the nervousness in her voice. "Not really. To tell the truth there really isn't a difference in how they're treated anymore. At least not the ones that were reclassified as 'enemies of the state', the ones serving set terms fare a bit better because they aren't included in the program."

Maggie noticed that his grin had faded quickly and Daniel suddenly appeared sullen and quiet. She knew that Daniel disagreed with the new training program. He had wanted to be an Auror since their fifth year and it had taken him quite a while to work his way into the program, which meant that he was willing to do what was required of him, but he still found the system cruel and barbaric. Of course both of them knew better than to discuss that here- in the belly of the beast so to speak.

"I better go, I'm supposed to be helping escort your new clients," he said with a ghost of wink. Daniel was one to never allow his bad mood to leak into a conversation.

The morning was predictably terrible. She met with three different patients that screamed incoherently at the mere sight of the exam table. Many of them believed that the Ministry had decided to simply exterminate them and fought tooth and nail against such murder. Others were eager for the end, begging her to end their life and growing hysterical when they realized that she was only prepping them for further torment. One had managed to strike out a hand before it had been secured to the table and smacked her roughly in the face, almost breaking her nose. The worst part was that it was hard to completely hate the very people that were bent on terrifying her because she could see that they were also in desperate need of care. Untreated illnesses, infected wounds, symptoms of everything from shock to nerve damage from overexposure to the Cruciatus Curse- could she really expect any of them to be sane?

Next on her list Prisoner 62501- Harry Potter. She obviously knew the story. She had been 7 years old when You-Know-Who had been destroyed the first time around. Her parents had told her the story again and again that year. She had been captivated with the idea of not only a wizard that was finally able to get rid of the source of so much misery but the idea that it came from a mere infant. Even at the age of seven she had known that anyone who could that would be special.

Which is why when the news had broken that not only had Harry Potter gone on a violent spree in his own muggle neighborhood against the very people that had raised him, but had also officially aligned himself as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as the man's number two in command- she had been devastated. Is it possible to feel betrayed by someone that didn't even know you? Because she did. She had seen Harry Potter as her savior and he had abandoned her, just as he had abandoned them all.

Just when she had thought her day could not get worse, now she was expected to actually take care of this person. This person that had inadvertently stripped her of the last remains of her childhood innocence. For isn't that what is truly lost when our heroes fall?

He was led in by John Higgins, the Captain of the Aurors and a man that made her skin crawl. The man was creepy, constantly coming on to her in lewd ways, a part of her wouldn't have been at all surprised to see the steely guard on the other side of the handcuffs. He was a cruel man that enjoyed the Training Program for all the wrong reasons. He didn't care about training new recruits or having a means that justified the ends- he just wanted to cause as much pain as possible.

Higgins had Potter by the upper arm and pulled him roughly into the room. Higgins had done this with every single one of the prisoners- not one of them had bothered resisting. The man simply enjoyed exerting his power.

"Got another one Maggie, last one for the day, right?"

Maggie nodded, giving a small relieved sigh at the thought.

"On the table!" Higgins shouted at his prisoner.

Potter pulled himself onto the metal exam table and quietly laid down while Higgins tied down both arms in the restraints, along with his legs. She was grateful that so far he didn't appear to be much of a screamer. She was developing a permanent headache from the hysterical cries of the inmates. Then again, it was usually the ones that seemed normal enough from the outset of the exam that she had to be careful about. Hysterical patients were bothersome but the ones that had retained some of their wits were downright dangerous.

"Right, I'm Healer Clark," she began in her business tone, at this point bored of the endless introductions that she had been forced to make over the past week.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Harry," came the rough reply from a damaged throat.

Maggie almost did a double take. After a full week and 57 patients, he was the very first person that had spoken a civil word to her. His voice was raspy and tired with a definite wariness of her that would have either shocked or offended Maggie a week ago. Still for the first time there was no snideness, no obscene remark about what the two of them should be doing now that one of them was tied down to a flat surface. However, he wasn't completely different from the rest of them, Maggie noticed that like many of the inmates, Potter's eyes followed her movements as she moved around the small exam room, privately watching each thing that she was doing or about to do to him.

"Er…right. I've been hired by the Ministry to conduct a medical exam on any and all prisoners that have been participating in the Auror training program to better understand both their physical and mental health. I'll conduct a brief medical exam and then I'll need you to answer a few questions for me- do you understand?"

The man in front of her actually grinned at this, "I think I can handle that much." His voice was quiet, still rough from disuse- possibly strained from screaming as she had seen from other patients. "Of course I haven't heard your questions yet. I never did finish school, you know, so be sure to go easy on me."

The comment was so unexpected that Maggie gave a startled laugh that she quickly turned into a cough. It would not do for him to think that he could easily charm her.

"Potter, you show the woman some respect or I'll be sure to teach you some myself, hear me?" Higgins asked.

"Yes sir," Potter said quietly, his eyes still on Maggie though as she raised her wand. In spite of his calm words, his even joking manner, the man visibly tensed at the sight of the wand. He didn't shout, or scream the way that others did. He didn't rattle and shake the restraints in a desperate urge to get away. In fact he seemed to understand on a conscious level that he was not about to be harmed- it was instinct that had become harder to control.

With a flick of her wand his prison garb was removed with the exception of the underpants that prisoners were issued. He tensed once again at the sudden exposure but said nothing. She could see immediately that she had her work cut out for her. Potter looked to be in a good deal worse shape than most of the others. Although still young and still moderately in good health from sheer force of will, he had been greatly abused by the recruits in the program. She waved her wand a few different ways, frowning at some of the results she was getting. Potter had walked into the exam unsupported but according to her readings he should barely be able to stand. He had three broken ribs, a badly sprained knee and ankle on opposite legs, a dislocated shoulder. Bad scarring on his back and torso as well as the back of his legs. Past injuries that had healed wrong so that the joints had mended together incorrectly. Slight nerve damage from the Cruciatus. Possible evidence of past sexual abuse? That was something that was harder to tell- it could, after all, have been consensual. She had seen a few cases in the past week of prisoners that liked things a bit rough. He had a case of untreated double pneumonia.

The most worrying thing was the way that Dark Magic flowed out of him. Dark Magic left traces behind, by those that had cast it but even more when the person was the victim of it. This man had it radiating off of him in a way that she knew must cause him almost constant pain. She had never seen anything like it. She thought that it seemed to be connected to the scar that he gotten from You-Know-Who when he had been a child. She remembered reading in the paper that Potter had once claimed that the scar still hurt him from time to time. Most people had brushed this off as delusional but from the readings that she was getting Maggie thought that perhaps the scar was actually corrupting him from the inside. Perhaps that was the reason for his murderous spree. If that was the case, Potter should have been held in St. Mungos instead of Azkaban, having been unable to control his actions.

She shook this thought off. She had no authority over sentencing. And no evidence to support what she was thinking. More information would be needed. "Take a deep breath for me," she instructed but the patient was only able to take a half breath before it was released in several painful coughs. She gave him a glass of water, holding it to his lips as he was still heavily restrained. He looked up at her with a strange expression on her face. "Thank you," he said quietly. Maggie only nodded, frowning at the idea that these prisoners were always surprised by even the smallest act of kindness.

"I need to draw some blood, I'll be using a needle and it will sting for only a moment. Don't be alarmed when you see the blood, alright?" she said. She had learned early to warn her patients about this next test. The first time she had done it without a second thought- that had been the first attempt on her life.

Potter nodded, his eyes still trained carefully on everything that she did. He didn't so much as wince when the needle went in, nor did he seem startled by the blood that was flowing into the test tubes. A method she had picked up from muggles but had come to find very useful.

The samples would be tested later. "Alright then Mr. Potter, I just have a few questions to test how you're processing information. How old are you?"

"What's the date?" he asked coughing again.

"Sorry?" she asked in confusion, it wasn't the first time that a patient had responded with a question of their own but she hadn't expected it of him. For the first time in days she had seemed to be speaking to someone that was not only rational but willing to cooperate.

"The date, or…" Potter actually blushed slightly at this next part. "The year. I know that's probably not a very good question to ask when you're trying to determine whether or not I'm crazy but I don't know how long I've been here- we don't get to see a calendar, so I can't tell you how old I am without knowing the date."

It was Maggie's turn to flush. First because he had been the first person to call her out on the reason for her questions in such bold terms but secondly, she had been asking that question all week and it had never once occurred to her that several of the prisoners would have no way of knowing how long they had been incarcerated. A few had thrown out haphazard guesses and when she had seen they had answered incorrectly from their file she had marked them down for it.

"November 10th, 1998."

If Potter was surprised by either how long or how short he had been in prison he didn't show it, instead he only nodded and answered in his same quiet manner. "In that case I turned 18 at the end of July."

"You were really only 15 when you were brought here?" she asked incredulously as she reviewed the file in front of him. Of course she had known that Harry Potter had been young when he had been convicted of his crimes, it had been a major story at the time, but somehow the reality of a teenager in a place like this had not really registered at the time. She had been so caught up in the anger that she had felt when she had learned that Potter had switched sides that she had not given much thought as to what it would mean for a 15 year old to be sent to Azkaban. For life.

"If it makes you feel better I was very nearly 16 at time," he answered dryly.

Maggie shifted uncomfortably but decided it would be best to say nothing, she did not want to start getting too friendly with anyone on this island.

"Alright can you tell me where we currently are?"

"I take it we're not at the happiest place on earth?"

Again Maggie had to hastily stifle a laugh and struggled to maintain her professional demeanor, "Are you unsure as to where you currently are?"

"Azkaban prison. Medical wing- which to be honest before today I had no idea even existed."

"You've never been treated for any injuries before today?" she asked before she could think better of it.

"Is anything marked in the file you've been reading?" He asked with a raised eyebrow, as if to say that the answer should have been obvious. "The last Healer…let's just say I was lucky enough never to have been sent to see him."

Maggie frowned but said nothing. It was still shocking to her to see the condition of some of the prisoners. "Can you tell me the reason that you're currently incarcerated?"

There was a moment of silence and Maggie sighed, she had thought that she actually going to finish an entire interview. "Do you want to know what I was convicted of doing or what actually happened?" he finally asked.

"Potter!" Higgins yelled from the corner. "Don't make me come over there!"

"It's alright John," Maggie said quickly. "He wasn't causing any trouble." She turned back to her patient and her voice turned stern. "I have no authority over prisoner pardons. If you're trying to convince me that you're innocent, it's really a waste of your time. Even if I were to actually believe what you told me, and I don't, there's still nothing that I can do."

The prisoner smiled once again, it was fleeting and rather sad but his eyes softened slightly when he smiled, and Maggie was once again reminded of the fact that she was dealing with someone that was still technically a teenager. "I very much doubted that they were having the Minister of Magic conduct medical exams on the prisoners that they've been systematically killing. He's a busy man. I'm fully aware that they don't ask your opinion on paroling 'enemies of the state'."

"Then why are you trying to act as though you're innocent?"

The man shrugged, "I didn't get much of a chance to do it at my trial, better late than never I suppose. But to answer your question I'm in prison because I was convicted of murdering my neighbor Mrs. Figg after she walked in on the torture of my muggle relatives and I was found with the Dark Mark on my arm." He had turned to face away from her. His formerly friendly tone had turned cold, distant even.

Maggie wasn't sure how to handle the situation. This patient had been far more civil than anyone that she had thus far treated but she didn't want to press her luck and foolishly forget that she was dealing with a violent criminal. She also didn't want to give him any indication that she actually believed that he was innocent. He had had a trial, she could not believe that they had not given him every benefit of the doubt. If he had been sent here- then he had to be guilty.

She battled with herself before asking the next question but it would be the best way to determine how he had come about some more delicate injuries and it was still technically considered a 'mental disorder' by the outdated Ministry standards. "Sexual orientation?"

The man picked up his head up from the table and raised an eyebrow at her. "Is that seriously a question?"

Maggie flushed slightly, the Ministry had not updated its ideas on psychology for many decades and as such still considered being gay a mental disorder however, for the purposes of her exam the question was not needed. "We're gathering information for a study on prisoners."

Potter looked unconvinced but shrugged. "I'm straight. I like women I mean, not that I get much opportunity around here."

Maggie nodded, looking at him closely and wondering if he was telling the truth. She had a feeling that he was, which meant that there were now a few more unanswered questions. Questions that she knew she couldn't ask in front of the Auror.

"Alright," she said instead feeling the need to switch gears. "I want to test your memory. Can you tell me my name?"

"You introduced yourself as Healer Clark but Higgins called you Maggie if this is a trick question."

Maggie blinked at the response, she hadn't even recalled that Higgins had addressed her by her given name.

"Right, can you describe for me if you've experienced any loss of time?"

There was a return of the former grin, "I would say the last two years have been pretty much been a loss, wouldn't you say?"

Maggie wouldn't be deterred, "I meant moments of confusion, trouble concentrating, loss of memory?"

Potter's face grew sober, he looked into her eyes and Maggie was startled to see that his were bright green. Honest eyes…but for the first time scared. "yeah," he admitted quietly. "sometimes…yeah that's happened."

She could see that it was a painful thing for him to admit. He was different from the other prisoners she had treated, not simply because he was the first one to treat her with even an ounce of respect and courtesy but because for the most part he was rational. She wondered what it felt like to know that you were losing pieces of yourself, wondering when one day they might all be gone for good.

"Nightmares?"

The patient nodded but did not elaborate.

"Potter fancies himself connected with his master," Higgins threw in casually. "Little nutjob thinks that he gets actual visions from You-Know-Who."

The man's jaw clenched slightly, "he is _not_ my master," he said in a firm but still quiet voice.

"Oh that's right," Higgins said with a cruel little laugh, "the precious little Boy-Who-Lived was framed for it all, right?"

"That's enough," Maggie said sternly. "Alright, I can't speak for any visions other than that they might be manifestation of other symptoms. Hallucinations are not uncommon when facing mental deterioration."

She glanced quickly at her patient but he did not react much to what she said. She could see that he discounted the idea that these delusions were not real but knew enough to realize that he was not going to be able to convince her.

"Alright I'm going to be healing some of your injuries, unfortunately it won't be a pleasant feeling. You have multiple breaks and sprains and pain potions are banned for prisoners. I want you take a deep breath and try to relax as much as possible. I'll move as quickly as I can but this will take a few minutes."

He nodded at her, the look in his eyes hard to read. There was a mixture of resignation to pain and yet determination to power through that was startling to her. She moved her wand as quickly as she could but she could see the color draining from his face, the beads of sweat on his brow, the way his bottom lip bleed through his biting of it.

"Alright, I'm done. It's over," she reassured him. His breathing was fast and shallow and for a moment she wondered if he had registered what she had said. After a moment though he looked at her, his emerald eyes glossy with pain. "I know I should be thanking you for helping me but if I'm being honest…I think I might hate you a bit," he said with a ghost a grin and Maggie struggled not to return the friendly sentiment. With another flick of her wand his prison uniform was returned to him and she noticed the slight release of tension in his shoulders at being fully covered once more. Another sign consistent with sexual abuse victims.

"I'm going to give you a couple of potions. You have a bad case of untreated pneumonia and you've been overexposed to some of the curses that the trainees have been doing. I'm also going to want to see you again in…" Maggie had to flip through her appointment book, she really needed to see him again soon but she was too overbooked. "10 days to see how you're coming along. In the meantime I want you to try and recognize when you feel yourself becoming confused or slipping away from reality. Does it happen multiple times a day? Can you recognize when it's starting? We'll talk more during your next appointment and I'll see if there if is anything that needs to be done. The Ministry is going to be sending me a fuller staff starting next week so I'll be able to schedule regular appointments with many of you. Once I'm better staffed I'll better be able to address more of your mental symptoms."

"Like a course of shock-spells," Higgins threw in.

"We'll discuss it later," Maggie said quickly. If he really was experiencing delusions it might be the only way. Once a patient went truly mad there was little that magic could do to cure it, but until it reached that point there were many steps that she could take. The Ministry wanted as many mentally competent subjects as possible. It made for better interrogation class assignments. A feeling of guilt wrapped around her at that thought. She had become a Healer to help her patients, not the Ministry. And yet over the past few years she had come to learn the importance of looking at the big picture. She just had to remember what her job was. To make her patients as healthy and comfortable as possible, not to stop the training program.

"Thank you," the man said in his hoarse, quiet way and Maggie was left thinking that this might very well be the only regular appointment that she didn't dread with every fiber of her being.

 **A/N: Thank you all for continuing to read and especially review!**


	4. Something Like Happiness…Briefly

**Chapter 4: Something Like Happiness…Briefly**

The Ministry- thanks to Ivan Tyson, from what Harry was led to believe- had been as good as its word. The Minister had apparently learned that things had escalated too far in the Training Program and had made it his personal mission to improve things. The staff in the mini-hospital wing had expanded quickly. Healer Clark soon had three assistants that were able to work full time and this group was used expressly by the prisoners involved in the Auror Training Program, all other prisoners were treated by a separate team as those prisoners required far less attention.

The team that oversaw the prisoners that would eventually be released back into society included a Mind Healer and something that muggles might have referred to as 'social worker' to help rehabilitate the former criminals into productive members of society. Harry had learned enough from the guards to know that while the concept of rehabilitation had at first seemed strange to many old-fashioned Purebloods that were used to the extreme punishment of Azkaban, the younger generation was incredibly receptive to the changing ways and praised Tyson for his forethought and bravery in shifting the standard. The Minister's popularity was only on the rise.

However, while the newly reformed prisoners were good PR, the real benefit to the additional Healers was ensuring that the Training Program had as many strong- both physically and mentally- participating prisoners as possible. All classified 'Enemies of the State' were now scheduled for weekly appointments to maintain their health- something that was desperately needed considering the rigors of the treatment they were exposed to on a near daily basis by the trainees and on many occasions the guards themselves. Prisoners were also now given potions for their illnesses and spells for injuries. Harry knew that in the past a common cold was almost certain to turn into a debilitating infection, a fever could have been fatal. Now every cough was not the first sign of impending doom and simple wounds were not destined to become amputated limbs.

The amount of food they were given had even been increased. While still foul tasting and at times nauseating, there was at least enough of it so that Harry no longer felt even hungrier after he ate than he did before. Even after just the first dose of potions that he had been given, Harry felt better than he had for months. That first night he had had a rare restful night and felt the even stranger sensation of being able to breathe normally.

Unfortunately, even after 6 weeks of the Healers' constant attention and care most of the prisoners treated Maggie Clark and the other Healers fairly horribly. Harry knew that the rough treatment by her patients was taking its toll on the young Healer, he could see the strain on her pretty, still young and innocent face, the tightness of her lips after having just been yelled at or threatened by a group of men that had come to distrust anyone around them that was not also in chains. Her eyes were wary and frightened and Harry felt a combination of sympathy for her and fear for himself. He knew full well that Healer Clark took the care of her patients seriously and treated them far better than the Ministry had ever intended, if they were to drive her away than he wasn't sure who her replacement would be. He felt a swell of anger at his fellow inmates for not realizing this themselves along with a just a hint of guilt for his own selfish reasons for wanting better treatment of a woman that had shown him nothing but kindness. Harry knew that once upon a time he would have wanted the other prisoner to treat the Healer better for her own sake, and her own sake alone, but that part of him was gone.

Harry had thought that the Aurors would be upset that their handiwork was now being counteracted but, on the contrary, the captains in charge of the recruits' training were rather thrilled at discovering that after the prisoners were healed a bit they were able to withstand longer and more powerful interrogative techniques. In hindsight, Harry would later think that he really should have seen it coming. Things had been going a bit too well for it to last.

Today was a special day. The Aurors were in rare form indeed. Harry had been dragged out of his cell almost two hours before he usually expected the Aurors to come for him and was brought to the large meeting hall where he noticed that every single 'Enemy of the State' was being held. It had been a long time since they had assembled them altogether. It had happened a few times in the first couple of months of the program when procedures and rules needed to be established. As they had done two years before, the guards pulled him into one of the four lines that formed a large square box so that the prisoners could see the Aurors in the middle- and witness the torture that was sure to come to their comrades any moment.

The room was silent aside from the rasping breath of the prisoners and the occasional footsteps of some of the patrolling guards. The trainees were all present which was rare, usually they worked in shifts so that they would each get a turn with the prisoners, and were standing against the wall on a slightly raised platform so that they could see over the heads of the prisoners into the center ring without getting in the way of the action. They too seemed a bit nervous in Harry's opinion and his stomach clenched in worry.

"One of you has been having quite a good time," Auror Higgins, Captain of the Guards shouted out. Higgins was a shorter than most realized at first glance. He was broad and spoke loudly as though to fill up as much space as possible. He was not a man of good looks or much skill with a wand and Harry suspected the man was aware of it. Instead he was determined to be intimidating enough that if people noticed his inadequacies they were not about to mention them. At present he was trying to be stern but there was such relish in voice in anticipation for the pain that he was about to inflict that it sounded gleeful. He held up an empty bottle of firewhiskey.

"This was taken out of a Auror's locker. Gift for his wife that was stolen and drank by one of you thieves. This was found empty out in Wing 2 and someone that is brazen with their disregard for authority deserves to be made an example of."

Harry grimaced. If someone had stolen the bottle he doubted that they would have just left it out in the open. While it was risky to hide the contraband in their own cell because there would have been no chance at deniability, it was still more likely for a prisoner to keep contraband there, as the cells were rarely if ever fully checked, than having a bottle out in the open. However, Harry knew the type of man that Higgins was. He loved to show that he was powerful and in charge, not only to the prisoners but to his own men as well. Which meant that he had planted the bottle himself in an attempt to rile things up a bit and flaunt his status. Harry wondered if he was trying to make a point about being in charge or if the man was simply bored of the usual routine and wanted a bit of drama, even if it was staged on his part.

Higgins glanced around the room, clearly enjoying that every eye was on him. "Bosh!" He called out suddenly, tone sharp and urgent, sounding much like a military drill sergeant.

"Yes sir," an eager voice responded, stepping forward and walking to the center through the prisoners to stand in front of his commander. Harry glared at the small, wiry man. Rickon Bosh was a recruit after Higgins' own heart. Vicious, cruel, poor with magic, he was the worst of the recruits in more ways than one. The only difference between them was that while Higgins could never endear himself to anyone with his homely appearance, Bosh would not have been out of place at a state dinner. He had strong, dark aristocratic features that even Harry could admit made him handsome and while Harry was not one to know much about family names he suspected that he came from money.

"Bosh I want you to begin a thorough interrogation. Show me what you've learned. In a group like this, what do you do first to find your answers?"

"Go after the most likely source sir."

"Good lad, and who do you think that would be?"

Bosh paused for a moment and Harry knew that the 23 year old recruit had no idea who in wing 2 would have been most likely to have stolen the bottle. Wing 2 was an older crowd- lifetime offenders from the First War that Voldemort had left behind during his massive breakout because they were no longer of use to him. Harry couldn't imagine any one of them having the skill to steal something as sensitive as a coveted bottle of whiskey from an Auror. These were men that needed to concentrate on walking back to their cell at the end of the day. Which to Harry only further proved that this whole thing was a mockery. No one in the wing had done it, which meant that the suspect list could include anyone. Anyone including...

"Potter."

All eyes turned to Harry, who stared back at Bosh with calm, cool eyes. He was suppressing the shudder that wanted to run down his body. Resisting the overwhelming urge to run, to deny the accusation, to plead that he wasn't responsible. Because none of that mattered. Higgins hated Harry- every recruit learned that much in their first week and if they wanted to impress their boss in any way, the best way to go about it was to hate Harry too. After all this time, Harry was the only prisoner left that had yet to confess to any of the crimes that he had been convicted of doing. Every other prisoner had broken- many times. In fact one of the pitfalls of the Ministry's brilliant plan to practice on prisoners was that they had quickly learned that as long as they confessed under questions as soon as possible they generally avoided the worst of the curses. Harry was the sole hold out, Harry often wondered if this meant that he truly was the only innocent person in the prisoner or simply that he was the most stubborn. Or possibly just the dumbest. In any case, this made him the perfect candidate to practice interrogation on, and it had inspired a competition of sorts among the recruits, all of whom wanted to be the first to break him.

Higgins smiled cruelly- clearly satisfied with the answer. "And what brought you to that conclusion?"

"The bottle was found out in the open, most might think it was a careless mistake but Potter is sneaky. And hates taking responsibility for what he's done. He was trying to blame it on the old geezers that wouldn't know any better."

Harry's eyes narrowed but he still said nothing. He gaze burned through Bosh, who swallowed for a moment when trapped in that accusing glare. The other prisoners were shifting nervously. It was always better when a crime was pinned on someone else, but whoever was questioned first had the best opportunity to blame another party. This was not the first time one of them had been asked to snitch on the others and each of them were weighing the likelihood in their own mind that Harry would accuse them under his questioning.

Two years into his sentence and much of the harassment he had sustained in the beginning had started to ebb. Harry had developed a reputation as a scrappy fighter that when given the opportunity to fight back, would never back down. Most didn't want to put in the effort it took to beat him up when they knew they would be getting matching bruises of their own.

However, Harry had made no great friendships with these men either. There was no trust between them, Harry was not one of their own and they had made sure that he never forgot it. Harry had been the scapegoat for any number of them in the past. With Harry as a clear enemy of prisoners and guards alike, he had been the natural choice of victims, this was his chance to return the favor.

"Prisoner Potter! Step forward!" Higgins yelled out, already coming towards him with the expectation that Harry would not comply. Higgins was wrong. Harry couldn't stop the man from falsely accusing him. He couldn't stop him from torturing him and even from humiliating him, but Higgins couldn't force Harry to show that he was afraid of him.

"Bosh, demonstrate for your fellow recruits the proper technique to get a suspect of a crime to either confess or to give up the guilty party."

Bosh turned to Harry with nothing short of delight on his face, Harry felt his stomach constrict with the anticipation of pain and braced himself for the worst.

"Are you prepared to confess? If you admit now to stealing the firewhiskey than we can give you a short Cruciatus, and a beating as your punishment. I'll even let you go to the Healer straight away. If you make this difficult, I swear that you will regret it."

"I didn't steal the Firewhiskey, but you already know that, don't you?" Harry asked with as much condescension as he could manage given the fact that he was already breaking out into a cold sweat at the thought of what Bosh would do with such an audience. Any 'class' with the recruits was brutal, but Harry knew enough to know that if they had assembled all of them here for an audience it was going to get ugly fast.

"You're a bloody liar Potter and we all know it. It's time that someone around here taught you some manners and I'm glad that not only am I the one who is going to do it but everyone else gets to watch it happen. You all might want to remember this day gents-" he called out into the room. "This is the day your precious little rebel is going to learn his lessons."

Without another word Harry felt the brutal sting of the Cruciatus curse and failed to stop his screams from echoing around the otherwise silent hall. It went on in similar fashion for several minutes. All eyes were concentrated on Harry and his torturer; some with morbid fascination, others with sadistic excitement, others still with simply horror as they remembered the pain themselves.

Harry was barely aware of the others though. He was in a world filled only with pain. Nothing else mattered except that struggle for a next breath.

The curse was let up for a moment and Harry gasped for breath. He lay panting for a moment and felt more than saw the shorter of the two men start to pace in front him, addressing the other prisoners.

"Let this be a lesson to you all! Potter here has rebelled against the Ministry and the authority of the Aurors for years. He likes to believe that he is strong enough to withstand the might of the Ministry but no individual is able to resist. Resistance is futile, there is only submission," Higgins voice echoed out. "The New Order is an Order of law and the might of the law and magic will conquer anyone who challenges it."

Harry struggled to rise again despite every single muscle in his body throbbing in protest, the only thing that kept him going was his own reckless rage. Blinded by the hypocrisy of these people claiming to be better than him when the truth was they were all bloody cowards.

"Are you ready to confess now?" Bosh asked teasingly.

"I didn't steal it. I've never even had a drink," Harry gasped out.

There was uncertain pause for a moment before Bosh's wand raised threatening once more. "But you know who did it...give us a name and we'll settle things."

Harry swallowed and glanced back at the prisoners. There were so many that he could name in that moment. Caius Carrow who had once whipped him with his water-soaked tie to his prisoner robes until he had bled. Myron Plenton who had put him in more than one compromising position over the years. Lucius Malfoy who had lied to the Aurors to help imprison him in the first place and used his wealth to get himself more than Firewhiskey in the prison at any time that he wanted. But Harry had always led more with his passion than his head and while he may well have hated all those men it didn't negate the fact that Bosh wanted him to be a liar. That the Aurors thought that they could break him and Harry had sworn never to break.

He took a deep breath as he looked into Bosh's eyes pale eyes and sealed his fate, "I don't think anyone took it."

" _Tell me what I want to know Potter_!" Bosh yelled at him again, his features contorted with rage at having been denied his answers. "Tell me the truth!"

"Fine! If you want the truth, you're just not Higgin's type! Sorry I know you've been dying to be his bitch but he needs someone a bit stronger," Harry finally fired back in anger.

There was a shocked gasp from the crowd- prisoners, Aurors and recruits alike stunned at the response. Followed by riotous laughter. Even some of Bosh's closest friends were fighting grins as recruit's face colored with explosive rage.

The wand seemed to be powered by pure fury alone and with a bellow of almost incoherent anger Harry was cut down with a wicked gash and shattered bones. He could barely breathe, white lights danced in front of his vision, blood poured out of him like an open facet. Still he struggled with every ounce of determination he possessed to keep the disdainful glare intact on his face.

"Give me a name Potter, or confess yourself, either way if you don't give me what I want in the next thirty seconds, I swear to Merlin that that will be the last cheeky comment that you'll ever be capable of making."

Harry was on the ground, no longer able to stand or even move, and at this point very tempted to drive the young recruit into ending his relentless misery once and for all- but there was something holding him back. It suddenly seemed more important to point out exactly what Higgins and Bosh were doing, let everyone know that Harry might be helpless against guards with wands but he was not fooled by them, and neither were the other prisoners.

"No one stole that Firewhiskey," Harry coughed, his voice barely above a whisper and every breath giving him nothing but searing agony in his chest. Despite his quiet voice, every person in the room heard what he had to say in the still silence. It was as though the people present had even stopped breathing.

"You've known that all along. But you think that a few of your pathetic curses are going to convince me to lie for you? To make this easier for you? You're worse than most of the Death Eaters in here. I never helped Voldemort and I will _never_ help you." He coughed weakly and as consciousness began to fail him he muttered two words that were only audible because the high ceilings of the stone-walled room carried the sound of a pin drop. "Fuck you."

Bosh cast another Cruciatus Curse but Harry was too weak to scream. He gurgled and blood dripped from his mouth and the curse lifted abruptly. It wouldn't be for several weeks that Harry would learn that Higgins had actually wrenched Bosh's arm away from him when it looked as though the recruit was actually going to kill him.

The room had grown silent and even with now closed eyes and on the brink of consciousness Harry could feel the weight of the men's stares on himself. Higgins, in contrast to Bosh, was stark white. His eyes flickered warily around the room and he could see the looks of mingled disappointment and surprise on many of the recruit's and other Auror's faces. Evidently many of them had not realized that this was nothing but a staged crime designed for a combination of instruction and entertainment for the recruits and instilling fear in the prisoners. They had foolishly believed in their teacher and leader, believing him honest enough to never consider planting evidence. Most of them did not seemly overly impressed with the Captain's methods.

Higgins' eyes darted around the room and he seemed to realize that he had pushed things too far this time. His own people were glaring at him with contempt. One of his prisoners was dying on the stone floor and this was not an accident or someone that had been ill, but someone Higgins had practically sanctioned murder upon. He cleared his throat, "Recruits, return the prisoners to their cells, this drill is completed."

The order was followed in efficient silence, everyone seemed eager to place some distance between themselves and the captain.

Harry was drifting. Slowly falling into a place beyond pain.

"Myers," Harry heard faintly. "Get Carrow and Lewis to help you drag this worthless piece of shit to Clark. It won't do for him to die today but rest assured…he'll answer for his attitude soon enough."

"Potter," the rough voice of Angleous Lewis, an older prisoner that Harry had spoken to only a few times before, said urgently "open your eyes lad. That's a boy, we're gonna be taking ya to that bitch Healer."

"Not a bitch," Harry muttered tiredly.

"Don't be talking just yet," another voice said. It was Carrow, Harry wasn't sure which one as there were several present in the prison but it was the nicest thing any of them had ever said to Harry to date.

Harry felt as though there was more to say on the matter but he couldn't find the words. He was no longer quite sure where he was or who was around him- and with these disorienting thoughts he drifted off and knew no more.

HPHPHPHP

The next week was interesting.

Harry had not realized how close he had been to actually dying but his wounds had been quite serious. He had very nearly bled to death before they had brought him to the hospital wing. Healer Clark had seemed almost impressed with herself when he had awoken two days later and she could say that she had saved his life. Higgins was as good as his word. As soon as Harry was even slightly coherent, he had been dragged off to solitary punishment. A dark room with only Dementors for company. Dementors that were given free rein to feed more strongly than they normally would. No light. No food, the prisoners were given a potion once a day that prolonged their life but only barely. No sense of time. It was disorienting. Every minute seemed to last an hour, every hour seemed to last a day. Harry had been sent up for seven days- enough to drive a prisoner completely mad.

When he was at last released from his private hell he followed the recruit that had been sent to fetch him back to his cell meekly. He felt weak. Old and broken and the thought that he was only 18 seemed to be unbearably unfair. He would be here for years. Decades. By the time he had made back to his cell, he had buried his face in his hands and succumbed to tears. Harsh, bone-wracking sobs escaped him and Harry felt at the end of his rope.

The next day he had an appointment with the Healer, Clark, which was now not only standard but protocol after intensive Dementor exposure to ensure the prisoner's mental health, but despite the fact that she kept trying to engage him in conversation, he remained silent. This was not an effort to be difficult, he simply lacked all ability to speak at the moment. She was asking him questions, probably trying to assess his mental status, but this would not even register in his mind until later. He noticed in his haze that she was looking at him with acute concern and making more notes in his chart than usual. He could only assume that if she had been giving him a test, he had failed. She left the room for several minutes, though Harry barely noticed until she returned, her face red with color and here eyes hard as though she had been arguing. Later, Harry would finally realize that she had argued with Higgins to keep him out of training practices for the rest of week, claiming that he was unfit to participate but at the time he was only aware that she seemed upset and he shied away from her touch as she moved to examine his still recovering chest wounds. It took days for Harry, with the subtle and kind help of Felix, to pull himself together.

However, as Harry slowly came back to his senses, he discovered that in his absence, since the events in the meeting hall, things had shifted quite subtly among his fellow inmates. When Harry had first been sentenced and entered the ranks of the Wizarding World's notorious prison it was as a vulnerable 15 year old boy. And everyone had known it. Many of the Death Eaters had been fully aware that he had been set up and gloried in their victory over their enemy. Others had scoffed that Harry had been arrested so easily. In fact, when Harry Potter had entered Azkaban there had been only one thing that Aurors and prisoners seemed to be in completely in agreement on, none of them had expected him to last very long.

Two and half years later Harry had proven them all wrong.

Harry was one of the few prisoners that was able to withstand what the recruits dished out with a stoic calm. He didn't beg or plead. He didn't cry or panic. And most impressively…he didn't turn on his other prisoners. It was not loyalty. Harry was not one of them. He had never been a Death Eater and most of the prisoners knew it. He was innocent of his crimes and possessed no sympathy for the people that were guilty. But he had not snitched on them to save himself or even when Harry was aware of rules that had actually been broken, he had proven that he kept to the prisoner's code of silence.

At first his refusal to talk had been nothing more than stubbornness. He had always hated being pushed into doing something, anything really, against his will and the very fact that the Aurors used torture to get their answers automatically pitted Harry against them. The irony being that, at least in the beginning, if they had simply asked nicely and treated him well... he wouldn't have even hesitated to be completely honest with them about what the other prisoners got up to. In spite of everything that he had suffered from his sham of a trial Harry still thought of himself as one of them, rather than a Death Eater. But their cruel treatment had obliterated any loyalty to the Ministry he might have once had. It was strange sensation- the fact that Harry was beginning to sympathize more and more with the same criminals that he had once despised; as was the fact that this sympathy had gained _their_ trust and loyalty in return.

After the showdown with Bosh, things shifted irrevocably. For Harry and later...the Wizarding World. Instead of being on the receiving end of their threats and abuse- physical and mental- he was starting to be pulled into their confidences. They started telling him their secrets, their stories and even some of their plans. It was slow at first. There was a notable lack of trust from both sides of the relationship but as those next few weeks past…Harry was surprised by how much he started looking forward to talking to some of the very people he had alternately hated and feared. And as further time went on, the nature of their relationship shifted once more.

If there was one thing that Harry had never expected to become in his life it was unofficial leader of a prison gang, but somehow that was the position that he found himself in. Despite the fact that he was still only 18, many of the prisoners had started to look up to him. He was far from the uncontested leader. Lucius Malfoy led one faction and Harry knew enough to know that he was still in contact with Death Eaters on the outside. They were plotting something and long habit had made it impossible for Harry not to be curious. Harry knew that Voldemort was not done with him yet and always kept one eye on Malfoy and his plots in order to protect himself.

There were others that would always distrust Harry on principle. But slowly he had started to gain a certain reputation that became increasingly hard for outsiders to ignore. He was fair. He was honest. And they had begun to see that he was, above all other things, loyal. Harry had learned that at the heart of things most people were not so very different. There were many in Azkaban that had been locked up because they deserved harsh punishment and the worst of these people Harry would never find common ground with, but many of those same people had learned harsh lessons both in prison and before in their former lives and were now simply beaten down by the lives they had led. He had learned during his time in Azkaban that everyone deserved compassion if not respect. That was what he offered to the inmates that he found he had no respect for- he gave them his compassion. And he had been surprised to discover that with growing frequency they in turn gave him their loyalty.

Most of them were looking for someone they felt was stronger to lead them- and somehow, without ever intending for it to happen, Harry had become that person for them. His new position did not go unnoticed by the guards either. Some of the more rational and practical Aurors knew that they could use Harry to their advantage and used his good standing to get him to keep other inmates in line. In turn Harry used his influence to keep the others from going after Maggie.

And as the weeks turned into months and as he grew stronger under her care, Harry had found that falling in love with Maggie Clark had been one of the easiest, most natural things in the world.

She had been the first person to show him an ounce of kindness in over two years. She was beautiful- with sandy blonde hair and long curvy legs that made her almost taller than he was. She was also brilliant. He appreciated the way that she described each step that she was going to do before doing it, explaining what different potions were for, answering his questions. Knowing how to make him feel at ease even when she was waving a wand in his face- something that he had learned to associate with only pain. She was also patient with his fears. Asking the right questions during the portion of the appointment designed for his mental health. It had been hard at first but Healer Clark was not just patient but persistent. When she had quickly found that he was deeply uncomfortable talking to someone he himself knew nothing about, she started to share things about herself to make him more comfortable. And as he started to open up about his own life he found that he liked to make her laugh and she made him feel lighter than he would have thought possible. Slowly those pieces of himself that Harry had begun to worry were either gone or broken forever were rebuilt and repaired.

Harry looked forward to his weekly appointments and was gratified to see that as the prisoners listened to him and began treating her with at least civil respect if not actual kindness than she gradually relaxed and became more comfortable with her job. She was a truly skilled Healer that cared about her patients, but she was still a 24 year old girl trapped among some of the worst criminals in their world. Harry had no delusions that she had hated Azkaban at first and would not have been surprised to learn that she had requested a transfer more than once but as she prisoners warmed to her, Maggie had clearly found the enjoyment in being a Healer she had always dreamed of for herself.

The thing that really tipped the scales for her was following Harry whispered suggestion of keeping the Aurors out of the examination room. The prisoners had an ingrained fear of the recruits- for good reason- and were therefore unable to feel at ease in front of them. By keeping the Aurors outside but the prisoners still restrained the Healer was still safe but the patients were calmer and more willing to cooperate. Healer Clark was celebrated as a virtual hero after that accomplishment and Harry had been quick to allow her to take the credit for idea.

HPHPHP

 **March 9** **th** **, 1999**

Things had been slowly improving for Harry ever since Bosh's terrible attack. He and Healer Clark had moved from a strictly Healer/patient relationship to one that resembled friendship. There was still a professional distance that neither of them could fully break. While they shared an easy banter and Harry knew that the Healer shared more with him than the other prisoners, there was still the fact that he was her patient and an inmate of the prison.

In the past month Harry had realized that he was in love with her but was not delusional enough to think that the relationship could never progress. She would never see him that way and he could hardly blame her. To her, at best, he was a mentally unstable patient that was clinging to the remains of his sanity with a tenuous grasp but at least was nice enough to chat to. At worst, he was a violent criminal that had tortured his closest living relatives and murdered a woman that had been trying to help him and she was merely humoring him as he was keeping the other prisoners in line.

Either way there was no future for them. She would want better, and if he was being honesty wanted better for her. There was nothing he could offer her and if she ever became too friendly with him, worse than losing her job was at stake. He was a declared 'Enemy of the State', fraternization with him could be considered treason by some. And so he settled for loving her from afar. Trying as best as he was able to be satisfied with the hour a week they spent together and the short reprieve he got from constant pain and misery that consumed the rest of his days.

That is until the day that Maggie leaned in and suddenly kissed him.

The appointment had started out just like any other. She had weighed him, checked his vitals, closed a couple of cuts that had still been present from a cutting curse he had been subjected to and then they had been talking, something that was technically considered 'therapy' for the purpose of the Ministry appointment but hadn't felt like it to Harry for the better part of two months. Talking to Maggie was too natural and enjoyable for him to consider it anything as clinical as therapy in his mind. But this time when Harry had made her laugh she had leaned over and kissed him. It was fast and nervous and she turned away almost immediately- coyly averting her eyes both from him and what she had just done.

For his part, Harry had been stunned into motionlessness. Too surprised to properly process what had just happened. Slowly his brain made certain distinct observations. Like the fact that despite its swiftness there was more tenderness than there had been with Cho. Like the fact there had been a thrill of attraction that had run through him the moment their lips had touched. Like the fact that he desperately wanted more from her and he needed to let out a slow breath to get control over himself.

"Maggie," he whispered after a moment. That caught her attention, he had never addressed her by her given name before.

"I'm sorry, that was inappropriate. I'm….I'm your Healer and there should be a level of trust between us."

"I trust you," Harry answered her quietly, his eyes locked onto her bright blue orbs. He thought that they looked like the ocean.

Maggie swallowed before pulling away and straightening up, her posture stiff and words stilted. "I'm also older than you…and in a position of…authority over you. It…it's very wrong for me to take advantage of you like that Ha- Mr. Potter. I apologize."

Harry studied her face intently for a moment. He had been coming to see her for 5 months and had had this particular fantasy sucked out of him by more than one Dementor. There seemed to be so much to say to her but at the moment there was only one thing that seemed especially important.

"Did I ever tell what really happened to my muggle relatives?" he finally asked softly.

Maggie started in surprise and her face shifted into lines of confusion, "no…you've told me that you're innocent." Even though the part of the weekly appointment designated for mandated therapy was generally very casual between the two of them, there were some subjects that as a Healer she had been unable to avoid asking about. All prisoners were required to have to assessments of mental health and his file was filled with various evaluations. The subject of his arrest, his visions, and his stubborn claims of innocence had all been discussed in detail between them.

In their early sessions together the Healer had urged him to make a full confession. After a few weeks she had pointed out that he was the only prisoner that had refused to do so and his refusal was only hurting him further in the trainee classes. She had also pointed out that it would be healing and cathartic for him to be honest. As time went on and the relationship had seemed to grow closer, Harry had noticed that she had begun to steer clear of questions about his innocence or guilt. Even during his mandated evaluations the questions were now merely perfunctory.

" _Are you prepared to make a full confession of your crimes at this time?"_

" _No."_

Harry had never before pressed her for her honest opinion but he needed to now. "Do you believe me? Do you believe that I could be innocent?"

Maggie bit her lip and Harry felt his heart sink a bit as his question was answered without words. "I want to," she admitted after a moment. "You're…different than the rest of…them," she said with a sweeping motion of her arm towards the door. "You're the only one that treats me with respect or kindness and I'd like to think that the person that I've been watching all these months, the person that has come to me after taking a beating for another prisoner when he knew they couldn't stand another one or the person that I know has gotten the others to treat me better…I would like to think that that person is as honorable as he claims to be, but…"

"But I was convicted in a trial so I must be guilty, right?" It was not bitter or sarcastic, Harry thought that he even understood. Maggie was an inherently good person. She was also a bit naïve about the world, he had noticed. She believed in authority and she believed that people in proper authority would not abuse it. To have an innocent person railroaded by their justice system did make sense in her world view. There were times when Maggie reminded him of Hermione in that regard.

Maggie paused but reluctantly nodded. Harry tried not to feel disappointed. His closest friends at the time had believed him to be guilty, there was no reason to think that a Healer that he a met a few months ago among a 100 other blood-thirsty killers would think differently.

He nodded his understanding before taking a deep breath. He was worried that she still wouldn't believe him. That he would tell her everything just to see doubt in her eyes. It was part of the reason that he had not said anything sooner. Week after week when they met he wanted to tell her everything. Wanted her to understand him the way no one but his elderly cellmate did. Now that she had kissed him and shown that there was at least a part of her that cared for him, he had to take his chance.

"The truth is…I hated living with Dursleys- my relatives that is- for as long as I can remember," he admitted in little more than a whisper. Maggie's eyes widened slightly at the confession but she stayed quiet as Harry continued his story.

"They used to lock me up in the Cupboard Under the Stairs which was actually my bedroom until I was eleven, they would blame me for things that my bully of a cousin did, they practically starved me- they are horrible people and I spent most of childhood trying to decide if I hated them or myself for never getting away from them. I pretty much landed on them… most of the time at least." He finished with his head down, feeling vulnerable and exposed after the confession.

He had never complained about the Dursleys like this before. He had told his friends and members of the Order how the Dursleys were awful because he never felt the need to lie on their behalf but he had always been quick to make sure that they knew that he was alright. He did not want their pity. He had hated the feeling of them looking down on him. But he knew that in order for Maggie to believe him, he had to be completely honest. The Dursleys had hurt him for year through their neglect and unwillingness to love him. He had survived and even here in Azkaban, left to his worst memories, he had never allowed them more power than they were worth, but those early childhood memories would always be a part of him. He had once thought that actually complaining about them would make him sound weak but the truth was the Dursleys deserved to be exposed as the monsters that they were and a part of him even knew that he deserved to be comforted for cared for when his guardians had failed so abysmally at the job.

"They sound terrible," she said with a frown, "didn't you ever tell anyone what was going on?"

Harry gave a hollow laugh, "of course I did. Loads of people knew about it- or at least most of it. I mean I didn't bang on about it…maybe I should have done...but everyone knew that I hated it there. I used to send letters to my friends begging them to send me food. They knew."

"The professors at Hogwarts knew that you were being abused by your relatives and they didn't do anything?" she asked in surprise. "I mean…you of all people as the…" Her voice faded before she could get to the long-forgotten hero moniker. As a Healer, Maggie probably knew about a system in place at Hogwarts to protect students from such situations, but once again Harry found that he was an exception and not in the way most would have expected.

Harry nodded. "You have to understand, I _had_ to live with them." He sighed slightly and rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. It was such a long story, one that seems ridiculous in so many ways. "You know that I survived the Killing Curse from Voldemort?"

Maggie shuddered slightly at hearing the forbidden name but nodded in fascination.

"I survived because of my mother. My mother begged and pleaded with Voldemort not to kill me. He even gave her a chance to get away but she wouldn't leave me…she died trying to save me. That's why the Killing Curse rebounded. And because she was the one that died to save me it was her blood that protected me."

"So you had to stay with your aunt because she was your mother's sister, same blood which means you would be safe there," Maggie whispered thoughtfully. Harry nodded solemnly, smiling slightly at how quickly the Healer had caught on.

"Maggie, the one and _only_ memory I have of my parents is them trying to fight off Voldemort so that they could protect me. My dad died for my mother and my mother was screaming hysterically for Voldemort to let me go and he killed her and then he laughed. They loved me and they died for me and I spent ten years living as virtual slave to my muggle relatives because Voldemort is a sadistic monster that wouldn't spare a pleading mother her child. Do you really think that I would side with that maniac? Side with the reason that I had to be raised by the Dursleys in the first place?"

Maggie had a look of transfixed horror on her face- unable to look away. Slowly she shook her head. "But I still don't understand what happened that day then."

Harry wiped a hand over his mouth and sighed, "My uncle happened. Death Eaters had approached him before I had even left school that year and offered him a bunch of money to take me out of the house and away from the wards that Dumbledore had constructed. Then they used Polyjuice Potion, Voldemort was the one that actually tortured the Dursleys- believe me they never saw that part of the plan coming- and then switched me out with the imposter after the arrest was made. The wards kept anyone that intended to do _me_ harm out of the house- not anyone that intended to harm them."

Maggie's eyes were wide, horrified. Blood wards were very specific, they were aimed at protecting a certain person. The others in the house were protected by their close contact with the target. As long as Harry stayed in the house his relatives would have been fine but they had thrown him out. Being muggles, Harry's relatives wouldn't have been able to be protected by the wards alone anyway. "But…but I don't understand, why didn't anyone believe you during the trial?"

Harry shook his head, his expression hardening as he remembered that day. The way the prosecutor had cut him off whenever he had tried to explain himself. The way that he was never asked any real questions other than what his relatives had done to him. "No one let me tell my side of the story at the trial. They asked me questions, but only about things that made me look guilty- which is why I told you about all this Maggie. I _needed_ you to know the truth. I don't care that you're older. Or that you're my Healer. But you kissed me, and I might not have a load of dating experience but I know enough to know that you like me- but why would you if thought that I was guilty?"

Maggie was thoughtful for a moment before she spoke. "I don't think that one act really defines you as a person. People aren't all good or all bad…they're a collective of all of their choices and decisions. I- I've seen that you're a good person, Harry. I see it in your eyes every day. But…I also think that you're capable of great violence. The others…" again her eyes darted towards the door with wariness. "They're afraid of you, you know. The last couple of months…they tell me a lot. I hear from the prisoners _and_ from the Aurors. I believed you were guilty because I've seen that anger in you that bubbles below the surface and I thought that if you were guilty it was done in a moment of anger. A moment where you lost control.

"I'm glad that I was wrong, because I believe what you told me. I also want you to know that even when I thought that were guilt I never thought of you as…as a bad person. I've also seen real goodness in you. Greatness. The others respect you- genuinely respect you. It's a fine line…respect and fear, most don't walk it very well. I admit that I wasn't sure that you were the exception but now…you have the ability to be a great wizard, Harry."

Harry was quiet a moment, digesting her words carefully. Voldemort ruled out of fear and this was far from the first time that Harry had been compared to the man.

"Did you think that I would hurt someone that was innocent?" he asked hesitantly. He had thought that he was showing her the real Harry, but she had pointed out that she knew him quite well. The anger that she spoke about was something that scared him. The idea that he could lose control and hurt people was one of his greatest fears.

"No," she said at once. "You're a good man," she repeated strongly. "A good man that has seen and been through terrible things. But all of that leaves a mark Harry- it's impossible for it not to. You were innocent of those crimes, and I don't think you want to hurt anyone innocent- but I think you would hurt someone that wasn't. And…I might care about you in spite of that but I can't say that it doesn't scare me."

Harry nodded, "I understand what you're saying. I'm not the person that I used be before. Azkaban…it has a way of chipping away at a person's soul. Piece by piece things you took for granted- like happiness and kindness, hope. All of its gone. I never killed Mrs. Figg and I need you to believe that. I need one person to really believe in me aside from Felix."

"I do Harry. I might be a damn fool for it but I trust you. I was attracted to that goodness in you from the start but now…" she lowered her voice and the tone was suddenly seductive. Her earlier reservations gone. "I want you to experience good things because that's what you deserve."

Harry grabbed her roughly and kissed her- forcibly, urgently so that she moaned pleasurably against his mouth.

HPHPHP

A month past and Harry and Maggie grew closer. Their attraction to one another pulling them together both physically and emotionally. For Harry the experience was similar to coming up for air after you felt as though you were about to drown. Harry was tentative at first. As a child he had never known affection. Never knew what it felt like to be comforted by a mother's soft embrace or a father's firm hold. His entire dating experience before Azkaban had consisted of one rather anti-climatic encounter under the mistletoe and a downright disastrous first date. And in Azkaban…

Harry was not prepared for the feather-light touch of Maggie's fingertips against his skin. It took him longer than he cared to admit to feel comfortable revealing himself to her without the feeling of vulnerability that he had felt since the day of his incarceration. Bruises and cracked ribs were easily healed but the scars of Azkaban ran deeper than skin. But Maggie was patient. She offered him sympathy and understanding but there was no pity. And soon Harry was learning the benefits of carrying on a physical relationship with an older and more experienced woman. Years of misery were dulled in her embrace, hours of pain were wiped clean by her furious kisses.

But even the pure ecstasy of being with her could not completely shut out the real world. And the real world gave Harry a harsh wakeup call one cold April night.

Felix was in rare form that night. He had been discussing the intricacies of various legal systems- both wizarding and muggle from around the world- and was only gaining stem when discussing the wizarding world's continuous habit of refusing to evolve with the times.

"It's laziness is what it is, but in the end, how much effort are they really saving?" he expunged on Harry after reviewing a litany of examples from various texts, all of which he had quoted with surprising details that Harry could only assume were completely accurate.

"Had we changed slowly over the years it would have been gradual and easy- much more comforting than the complete overhaul that they will need to do now!"

Harry only nodded his understanding. He truly did agree with everything that his friend and mentor was saying, but at the moment was too tired to properly share in the man's passion, it had been another very hard day with the Aurors.

"Potter," a man's voice called neutrally into the darkness of the cell. "Come with me."

It was one of the newly instated Aurors, one that was still completing their first rotation through the prison after graduating as a Trainee, Myers was his name Harry remembered. He was one of the few that Harry didn't mind. The broad-shouldered man was good-natured for the most part and had not enjoyed his 'training' with the same vindictive pleasure that many of the others did. He hadn't become an Auror as a way to legally inflict pain or power over others- he was a man that genuinely believed in doing the right thing and putting yourself on the line to protect the people that you care about.

Harry rose slowly, mostly due to his aching muscles but also out of ingrained wariness that fast movements would provoke a violent response.

He followed the Auror silently down the hall to a small room, glancing swiftly at the man before entering in an attempt to gage what kind of danger he was in. These little one on one meetings were unfortunately not particularly uncommon. Aurors could do just about anything to the prisoners that they pleased without any fear of repercussions and this was unfortunately not the first time that an Auror had gotten him alone in a dark room. Harry didn't think that Myers was the sort to find pleasure in needlessly hurting people, but that idea didn't stop the shudder that ran down his spine when he heard the door slam shut behind him. It didn't stop his heart from pounding in fear inside of his chest as he acknowledged that once again he was at the mercy of someone with a wand while he was utterly defenseless.

"I wanted to speak to you alone," Myers began, his face stern. "You should know that Maggie is my best friend and I want you to leave her alone," he stated bluntly.

This train of conversation was so different from what Harry had come to expect from a private meeting with an Auror that for a moment the words hardly made sense at all. An unconscious shutter of relief ran through him and he exhaled sharply a breath that he hadn't even known that he had been holding. He gawked dumbly for a moment before he was prepared to speak.

"I'm not doing anything to Ma-Healer Clark."

Myers scowled at him, his voice rising slightly in anger, "I've known Maggie since we were eleven years old, she is the best friend that I have ever had and she is terrible at keeping secrets- especially from me. I know that you've been messing her about."

"I have _never_ done that," Harry stated firmly, this time sincerely

Myers stopped and eyed him carefully, "Maybe…and this is most likely giving you more credit than you deserve but maybe, not intentionally but do you have any kind of idea how much trouble Maggie would get into if word got out about the two of you? She wouldn't just lose her job- a job that she has wanted since she was 13 years old and worked her ass off for by the way- but she could be arrested for fraternizing with a known 'Enemy of the State'."

Harry said nothing but reluctantly accepted the point as a valid one. He had in fact raised a similar objection to Maggie only two weeks ago.

"Let me put it to you this way, where do you honestly expect this to go?" Myers asked seriously. His voice rose in a combination of anger and passion. "You're not in here for a year or five years or even 10 years- you will be in this prison for the rest of your life and that means the rest of Maggie's life too. It's selfish of you to expect her to be with you. Maggie wants a real family and she deserves a good life."

"She deserves the best life," Harry corrected quietly but it was enough to stop Myers in his tracks.

"I'm not an idiot," Harry continued, still quiet. "I've said all of this to Maggie myself. She deserves a hell of a lot better than what I can give her and I sure as _hell_ don't expect her to put up with me forever- but it's her choice."

"Maggie has always followed her heart more than her head, it's what gets her into so much trouble."

"You say that she's your best friend, do you trust her?"

"Of course I trust her, I don't trust you."

"That's fair, I'd be surprised if you did but for the record you can trust me with her. I would never hurt her, you don't have to believe anything else about me but you should believe that."

"I'd rather you hurt her once now than over and over again for the rest of her life. You know that she actually believes that you're innocent? You're messing with her head and it's only going to kill her later when she wakes up and realizes how much of her life she wasted on you."

Harry was silent for a moment, weighing what he wanted over what should be the right thing to do- trying to make sure that he wasn't doing the selfish thing. He cared about Maggie, he was almost positive that he was already in love with her, but how could he avoid hurting her?

"This might sound selfish but it's not my place to tell Maggie what to do. Maggie is smart and independent and she can decide for herself what she wants out of life. If she decides tomorrow that she can't be with me, then I'll step aside. I will _never_ tell anyone about our time together- I promise you that. I will never hurt her or use her. I have been _nothing_ but honest with her but I won't make decisions for her and then claim that her for own good, I respect her too much for that."

"But you won't break up with her to protect her?"

"If I had to protect her from Voldemort I would do it in a heartbeat. If I were in a position to do _anything_ to fight in this war other than watch from the sidelines as innocent people die every day, than we might be having a different conversation. You might not believe that I'm innocent Myers, but you should know this much- there is _no one_ in this whole world that wants to stop Voldemort more than I do. That monster has caused me and my family nothing but misery but…" Harry shrugged, swallowing down how much this next admission truly hurt him. "I'm here and that means that I don't get to make the decisions. That falls to Maggie. You should tell her everything that you've told me. Warn her to stay away- I won't blame you for looking out for your friend, I would do the same thing if our situation was reversed. And if she takes your advice…well I wish I could say that I'll be happy but that's a bit too generous. I care about her, I want to be with her but I know what this is and I think I know it can't last forever…but it can last for a while. And being happy for a little while is better than no happiness at all."

"You really think that you can just give her up whenever she says that she's had enough? Let's pretend for a minute that you that you really do care about her- maybe you even love her- the longer this goes on the deeper you get in, and the deeper Maggie gets in. It's only going to be harder to end it later."

Harry swallowed, he knew the truth in Myer's words and he knew that even now as each day passed life without Maggie seemed harder and harder to imagine. "I meant what I said…happiness doesn't last forever but only fools walk away from it. Someday Maggie is going to want all of the things that I can't give her and she's going to leave…but breaking her heart and telling her it's for her own good is as good as telling her that I don't respect her. Like I said- warn her, let her decide and if she wants to end it, I will wish her nothing but happiness and walk away. I will never tell anyone about us, never use our relationship to hurt her, but, Myers, if she doesn't listen to you than I won't either."

It was a more confident speech than Harry felt. He respected the man in front of him for looking out for his friend. After all, as far as Myers was concerned his best friend was attempting to carry on an illegal affair with a dangerous murderer and Death Eater, Harry truly didn't blame the man for attempting to protect the people that he cared about. Harry was also acutely aware that although the Auror was a good man he was also carrying a wand. And believed that he was acting in his friend's best interest. A part of Harry was almost certain that he was about to be cursed.

Myers was quiet for a long time, he was looking Harry over. Carefully considering the person in front of him and Harry struggled to maintain the man's even gaze. It wasn't easy when the man was wearing Auror robes. "You're giving me your word that I can trust you?"

Harry nodded solemnly, his shoulders square and his posture erect. "I am."

Myers nodded slowly, "I just hope your word is worth more than I think it is."

 **A/N: Thanks once again to everyone that reviewed. There's one more chapter of Harry in prison before we get back to the Order and see what everyone else is up to.**


	5. At the End of Paradise

**Chapter 5: At the End of Paradise**

 _Please see Trigger Warnings in First Chapter for those that are affected by sensitive material..._

 **April 2, 2000**

" _ **Attacks Down: Has Our Minister Saved Us All?"**_

Ivan Tyson smiled grimly as he reviewed the article in the _Daily Prophet._ The answer to the Headline question was not quite as definitive as he would have liked. He would have to subtly convey his displeasure to the editor. Nothing too pushy of course. Nothing to make the pompous little twit of an Editor doubt that he wasn't in charge of what he published. Fudge had always been blatant in his control, no finesse. The key was a press that believed they were printing what they wanted but conveniently aligned with his political agenda. It was a thin line but Ivan knew that he had a knack for it.

Still, all things considered the article was positive. The Dark Lord was still inspiring fear throughout the whole of Britain, he was gaining traction with several dark magical creatures and even solidifying certain power bases within the proper Wizarding World, but the message was clear: everything that could be done was being done and it was all thanks to brilliant leadership. Ivan Tyson was the man _, the only man_ , responsible for keeping the threat of chaos at bay.

It was an excellent time to be Minister.

People were scared and whenever there were problems during an administration, there was also opportunity for greatness. No one was ever remembered for _continuing_ to keep things safe, things first had be put at risk for the people to celebrate you. Fudge had been an idiot- vigorously denying the existence of a threat when he should have been making a name for himself by taking care of the people and letting them know who was responsible for their safety. Instead, the man had buried his head in the sand and allowed his successor to not only take all the glory, but add to his own prestige by following someone that had set the bar so low to begin with.

In truth, Ivan loved the former Minister; after all, Fudge's mistakes had been to Ivan's profit. The public had easily rallied around him once they were offered a Minister that would not shy away from conflict. He had made it clear that he was their leader and that the rest of the world would be shielded from harm only if they were firmly behind him. Fudge had seemingly abandoned them once things had gotten difficult, and in contrast Tyson had shown that he was their strength and glue which held their very world together.

But the thing that Tyson was truly grateful for might have been more surprising than most people realized. Fudge had been responsible for getting rid of the only real obstacle to his ultimate power- Harry Potter. Not only had a vulnerable public felt betrayed and hurt by Potter's deflection to the Dark Lord, which had made them all the more loyal to their new rallying point, but it had also removed the one person that would have eventually been able to challenge his own status as potential savior. Tyson knew that the Wizarding world would have propped the boy up as the answer to their prayers, turned him into a supposed "Chosen One" with the power to defeat the monster he had been able to rob of power for 13 years as a mere infant. There had already been some mild speculation about Potter after it had been discovered that there had been a fight in the Hall of Prophesy- some people had thought at the time that there had even been a prophesy concerning Potter. No amount of clever public relations angling would have been able to outdo the idea of a destiny-guided savior that was fated to destroy a Dark Lord. Potter was the stuff of fairy tales and legend and the people would have fallen for it. Luckily the boy had been arrested before that theory had gained real traction with the public.

Now that same savior had become the enemy and little Ivan Tyson- too slow for the Quidditch team, not powerful enough for the Auror Program, never strong enough in the past to receive the recognition that his intelligence and charisma should have afforded him- was set to go down as the greatest Minister of all time.

Ivan's morning tea was interrupted by a soft knock on the door.

"Ah Higgins, I was expecting you. I trust you have the report from Azkaban?"

"Yes sir, brought it over personally, just as you asked. Along with the... er… _other_ information we discussed," the burly man said with a poor attempt at a conspiratorial wink.

Tyson nodded and tried his best to look satisfied with the man, though in truth he was fairly repulsed by him. Overweight, ill-spoken, poor manners, a lower class of person was hard to find but that didn't negate the fact that Higgins was both useful and exceedingly easy to manipulate. The man had clearly always craved authority and power (Ivan's best guess was that the man had been mercilessly bullied as a child and sought revenge now) and yet at the same time he also needed approval from others. Tyson was very careful to give the man both.

Tyson glanced over the official reports but that was not why he insisted meeting with the Captain every few weeks- it was the unofficial information that usually proved to be invaluable.

Tyson nodded and glanced up, "and the other situation?"

Higgins grimaced, "I wish I could tell you better news sir but…he's just a bleedin 'ero to 'em! Every time one of me guards goes after the boy its only get him more support. Its even worse with some of the newer lads- they're starting to hear right from the start that he's...he's the one that's watch out for him and they've been getting into his circle faster than ever!" Higgins frustration with the increasingly tenuous position of a certain troublesome prisoner was clear and his eyes darkened with hate even as soon as the subject was raised.

Ivan however, was not simply frustrated anymore but fully angry about a situation that had come about over a year ago and only gotten worse if the weekly reports were anything to go by. He closed his eyes and struggled to reign in his temper, "and I thought that was why we had discussed last time about not going after Potter _directly_."

"Er, that's right sir, that we did indeed. And I listened to ya, wouldn't never disobey one of your orders sir," Higgins rambled and Tyson was once again struck by the dichotomy of the man's temperament. He had promoted Higgin's to Captain himself because he was well aware that the man thrived on exerting his paltry power over anyone that was considered a subordinate to him and yet at the same time the man was hopelessly submissive to his own superiors.

"Well?" he prompted impatiently.

"The old man- Potter's cell mate that is- is dead. Two of them were close, everyone knows that Potter thought of the man as a father. Died under interrogation practice, Potter had to watch the whole thing. Worst I've seen him in quite a while, actually got to begging us to stop, something Potter hasn't done in quite some time. He was quiet for a bit after that... but it still hasn't stopped his influence."

Tyson nodded his approval at this but his mind was racing through the pros and cons of following this course of action as a means of controlling the Potter situation. Higgins had come to complain several months beforehand about the interesting power dynamic that had formed at the prison. It seemed that more and more prisoners were turning to none other than Harry Potter as their official leader. Higgins' main concern had been the fact that he felt this newfound- but undeserved- respect had gone to the boy's head.

Tyson, however, was concerned about the fact that the boy had managed to create a rather solid power-base in the most unlikely place. Rumors were starting to fly that he had even pulled some of his fellow Death Eater friends away from their master and they were now loyal to the boy instead. But worst of all was the fact that there had been rumblings that even many of the recruits and perhaps some of the Auror guards themselves were starting to doubt the boy's guilt and started to respect a boy that had not bowed to the pressure of the Ministry even after all this time. It was bad enough that Potter was gaining allies within the prison but the idea of him gaining allies that were free to leave the cells of Azkaban and influence the general public was unacceptable.

Tyson didn't know whether or not Harry Potter was truly guilty of the crimes he had been imprisoned for- nor did he care very much either way. The important thing was keeping such a powerful wizard neutralized. Ivan was the natural enemy of Voldemort and Albus Dumbledore's days were numbered- but Potter? The boy was an impressive wizard and the more he learned about him, the happier he was that he had been taken out of the game long before Tyson himself had stepped out onto the field. He had reaped all the reward but held none of the blame. However, as time passed it became clear to Tyson that he needed to take care of the Potter problem and he could not afford to simply kill the boy with so many questions hanging over his head.

"What was the reaction of the other inmates?" he finally asked.

"There was almost a bloody riot on our hands is what 'appened! They seemed to realize we was being deliberate in going after the old man cause he was close to Potter but instead of moving away from him as they were supposed to have done, they all felt right protective of him. Strange lot, Potter's men."

Tyson frowned, that was not the reaction he had been anticipating. By targeting Potter's closest confident he was hoping for one of two possible outcomes. Either Potter's own spirit would finally be broken down to the point where the he would no longer be able to lead anyone or the other prisoners would be too scared to show their support. Criminals were not generally known for fiercesome loyalty.

"And the Aurors? Have the rumors still been spreading?" Tyson asked in what he hoped was an unworried tone. This was the most dangerous situation of all.

Higgins nodded, his own expression angry at what he considered betrayal by his own guards. Higgins was too stupid to be properly worried.

"Do you think they actually believe that he might be innocent, or are they just bored and just talking?"

"I dunno know Minister. Potter was sent to Azkaban, dunno know why that's not enough for some of 'em."

 _Because not every Auror is a blind sycophant lacking the ability to draw their own conclusions. Unfortunately._ Tyson thought wearily. It was time to change tracks. So far these small rumors about Potter's supposed innocence had been confined to Azkaban Island but if he let them go on much longer there might be grounds for a re-trial. Tyson could not let that happen. He had looked over the transcripts of the original trial himself when he had first learned that Potter might still be a threat after all. The last thing he needed was for it to become public knowledge that Potter was never given the opportunity to speak on his own behalf or call his own witnesses.

"Potter was upset though?" Tyson clarified, referring back to the cell-mates' death.

"What? Oh sure, balling and everything. The old man was Potter's mentor or somefink, always giving him advice and telling him all sorts of things. Filling his head with nonsense of you ask me."

"If this cell mate was helping Potter all this time, why didn't you separate the two of them a long time ago?" Tyson asked slightly exasperated.

Higgins looked at him blankly, "all cell assignments are final unless the prisoner is specifically charged and convicted with a new offense," he repeated back verbatim from the manual and Tyson fought the urge to slap his own forehead. It was mind-boggling to watch Higgins puzzle out the limits of his own authority. The same man that thought nothing of torture or rape of prisoners would never think of altering a room assignment for the simple reason that it was the manual when no one had ever specifically written about physical abuses of guards and prisoners.

"Is Potter any closer to falling in line now that his friend is no longer around to support him?"

Higgins bit his lip, "er actually Minister…no, but…" he added quickly, eager to share this next piece of information. "I did find out something that I think is going to convince Potter to do whatever you want from now on."

"Really?" Tyson asked skeptically. The boy had proven to be beyond stubborn and Ivan did not have much confidence in the man in front of him.

Higgins smiled and Tyson felt his stomach turn over in disgust. Higgins was not an attractive man on a good day but when he smiled it only highlighted the fact that he was missing several teeth and the remaining ones were brown and chipped.

"Potter's been sleeping with the woman Healer- Clark, her name is."

Ivan's eyes widened at this news, "are you certain about this information?"

"Fairly sir," Higgins admitted with a shrug. "They've been right careful about it. Ain't no one's actually seen them at it or anything but everyone knows somefing has been going on. Word got out that it was Potter that convinced all his lackey's to start treatin' the bitch better."

Ivan raised an eyebrow at this remark, "bitch is she?"

"Oh you know the sort, thinks right highly of herself. Won't ever take a compliment without it being seen as 'harassment' or whatever. Little cunt never had the time of day for me or any other Auror but always has the time to be checking up on her favorite patient."

"So she turned you down and now you want to use Potter to get even," Ivan clarified. "How do I even know if Potter gives a damn about this girl?"

"Trust me, Potter's the type that cares about anyone that gives him the time of day. Loves to be the bleedin' hero all the time. Even if they ain't sleeping together- and I would bet cold hard galleons that they are- you go after her and her job, and Potter will fall in line."

Tyson mulled this thought around in his head. Potter was a different type of adversary than any other that he had faced before. The boy appeared to be unbreakable. He had read enough to know that Potter had endured more abuse and harassment in his short life than the average five men combined and yet he continued to fight. He didn't bend to others and there was a stubborn pride in him that was uncompromising in every way. In another life Tyson could admit that he could deeply respect him, especially for the strength of someone so young.

He had a way of manifesting support from people without even trying. He had this indefinable power to him that both attracted and repelled, he could have been a powerful ally if controlled properly. But of course that was the mistake of hubris- thinking that someone so powerful could ever be kept on a short leash. Tyson was successful because he did not overestimate his own ability.

If there was one thing Tyson had learned from history was that the weak could never control the strong for very long. Potter would never be a simple lackey. Some people were better kept as an enemy, a defeated enemy. Tyson needed to destroy Potter before the boy even knew that they were at war. At the moment Potter had no idea that he was even a matter of discussion in the office of the Minister, and Tyson intended to work fully from the shadows until the time was right. The natural next step would be to go to Potter directly and threaten the woman's career and even freedom from Azkaban herself unless he fell in line, but threats of that nature never lasted forever. No for this… Tyson had a better idea.

"Tell Healer Clark that I want to see her in my office…there are some things about the relationship she has with some of her patients I would like to discuss."

Higgins grin was frighteningly gleeful.

HPHPHPHP

The cell was dark. It should have been quiet without Felix lecturing him about potion ingredients or running through a philosophical argument about literature or politics- but Azkaban was never a quiet place. In the absence of Felix's calm, soothing voice filling his mind with cool fact and logic that could not be corrupted by the Dementors, there were only the screams and wails of madness in its place.

Hysterical cries, phantom one-sided arguments, howls of anguish echoed up and down the hallway. Harry thought that he should have grown used to these sounds by now but it was impossible to be surrounded by such a constant onslaught of noise and not have it wear down your nerves, even when you thought that they were already frayed beyond repair.

During this past year of Harry's life there had been moments that had almost resembled happiness. His day to day life had not changed very much. He was still pulled out every day by the Aurors and their trainee candidates to be tortured. Humiliated. He was still plagued by visions of Voldemort and suffered nightmares from the events of both his current and former life.

But there had been fewer lapses in reality. He had felt stronger to deal with constant pain, be it physical or mental. And for brief moments that he had trained himself to be content with, he was even happy. The reason was simple- Harry finally had something worth staying focused on. Being with Maggie had changed him; made him a better man. He loved her and with that love came hope. Seeing her inspired him, being with her healed him and waiting to see her sustained his spirit.

But love alone did not take away the reality of Azkaban nor the crushing pain of true loss.

Watching Felix die had been terrible. Harry had felt a piece of his very soul die along with his one true friend. The mentor that had taught him more about magic and life than any other person had done for him. Felix had given him his time and his wisdom- something no one else had ever bothered to do before. Even Dumbledore, who Harry had once idolized, had all too often left him stumbling blindly and alone. As a lonely child the Headmaster had seemed a type of savior to him but over the last years he had seen the man mistakes the man had made regarding him, and it had crossed Harry's mind on several occasions that perhaps it had not been mistakes at all. He had endured years of neglect and abuse at the hands Dursleys, there had been more years of lies about the prophesy. When had Dumbledore ever really helped him? _He_ had been the one to go after Quirrell at the age of 11 when his own Head of House had casually dismissed his concerns. _He_ had had been the one to find the Chamber of Secrets when the Headmaster and all of the teachers in the building had also known that a girl had died in the bathroom the last time it had been opened and yet none of them had done a thing to save the students. _He_ had to be the one to save Sirius when his own Headmaster and the _Chief of the Wizemengot_ at the time had claimed that there was nothing that he could do.

In the end it was not the great Albus Dumbledore that had spent hours lecturing him on potions or discussing the finer points of British muggle philosophy or even trying his best to offer comfort when Harry broken down after another day of pain and fear. It had been Felix Casterline, ex-Grindlewald supporter and husband to a muggle. If there was one lesson the Felix had imparted to Harry the most it was that people were capable of change and more complicated than a simple label of 'good' or 'bad'.

He knew that he was probably giving Felix too much credit. They had been trapped in a small cell together. There had been no benefit for Felix not to be nice to him and if there had been, Felix might have betrayed him without a second thought but Harry liked to concentrate on the fact that the man had died his friend.

Harry had his closed his eyes and was repeating back the last Transfiguration lesson that Felix had given him, whispering the instructions to himself in the darkness when his concentration was broken by a soft voice calling, "Harry…"

His eyes snapped open in surprise as he turned to the source of his interruption, afraid for a moment that he had completely imagined the voice before his eyes focused on the young, pale woman in front of him. "Maggie?" He asked in blank shock. "What are you doing her? It's too dangerous! We can't be seen together…and you know you shouldn't go to the cells alone…" Harry wasn't sure which of the many reasons why Maggie shouldn't be there presented the greatest threat to her- the guards or the other prisoners.

"Shhh," she whispered back, her tone oddly distant, to Harry she almost sounded drunk. "It's alright Harry, we don't have to worry anymore. We don't have to worry about anything anymore."

Harry stood and walked over to the bars slowly, an ominous feeling of doom settling over him. "What are you talking about Maggie? Are you alright?" He kept his voice calm and level, trying to soothe her when he could see that whatever had brought her to his cell in the middle of the night when they both knew that she was never supposed to see him outside of her office had her deeply upset.

She swayed unsteadily and grabbed the steel bars of the cell for support as she shook her head, "no…no not really. Right now…I'm not very well at all but you don't need to worry Harry, because everything is going to be better soon."

Harry was filled with an unidentifiable terror. This wasn't like Maggie. She didn't get drunk or at least she had told him that she rarely drank alcohol and never more than a drink or two, she had never come to his cell before and she had never spoken so dejectedly while telling him not to worry.

"What's wrong, did something happen?"

Maggie smiled cynically, "That would be understatement, love."

"Is Daniel alright?" Harry guessed hesitantly. As an Auror, Daniel was in a dangerous position in the war and he knew that Maggie would be devastated if anything had happened to her best friend.

This time Maggie smiled more genuinely, "You're a good man, Harry. Most men would have been jealous of a girl that has a boy as her best friend but you always supported him. Even when he was against you. Do you know how many times Daniel tried to convince me to ditch you? So many times," she slurred, shaking her head almost nostalgically. She swallowed and then gave another sad smile. "But it never bothered you…"

"I would never tell you who to be friends with," Harry said carefully, still unsure where all this was leading. "The two of you have been friends for a long time, it wasn't my place to come in the middle of it, but you didn't answer my question... is he alright?"

"Daniel is fine," Maggie answered shortly, suddenly dismissive. Harry was quiet for a moment. He knew that something was wrong, that much was obvious, but it also seemed clear that she had come to tell him about it and he didn't think pushing her into speaking before she was ready would be helpful.

"We weren't as careful as we thought," she finally said bluntly.

"What do you mean?"

"Higgins found out. About us, I mean. He told Tyson. The Minister knows we're together."

Harry sucked in a sharp breath, this was what he had been afraid of, Maggie being in trouble because of him. There wasn't much else anyone could do to him but Maggie…she didn't deserve to bear the punishment for both of them. "Merlin…Maggie I'm sorry. So sorry, this was the last thing that I wanted. Has…has the Minister done anything yet?" he asked, wincing slightly. It was almost certain that Maggie would lose her job for something like this but Harry was more worried about the possibility of her being arrested.

"Oh yes…Tyson's done plenty," she answered harshly, full of bitterness. "You know that I always supported him? I was so… _proud_ to have a man like him as our Minister. I actually thought that he was…" she shrugged rather hopelessly.

Harry shook his head and tried to tread carefully, "Maggie I really am so sorry, I always knew that if we got found out than you would get the sack. Daniel told me that I wasn't being fair to you, he was right."

Maggie laughed wildly again but the effort seemed to tire her this time and she leaned heavily against the bars. "Oh Harry…he didn't sack me. In fact I doubt the man gives a damn about 'appropriate conduct', the only thing he was concerned about was beating you."

Harry felt as though he had just been punched in the stomach. "I…I don't understand. I've never even met Tyson before, Fudge was still Minister when I was sentenced."

Ivan Tyson had always been a source of internal conflict for Harry. On the one hand he hated the man for the Auror Training Program and everything that he had been forced to endure at the hands of the Aurors. And yet at the same time he had heard again and again how the man was saving the Wizarding World single handedly. How he cared about the people and tried to do the very best that he could. Harry had half-convinced himself that the Minister truly didn't know how terrible the Training Program actually was. Either way he had never felt any person connection to the man, never assumed that the man gave much thought to the formerly-famous, now-infamous Harry Potter as a felon.

"He knows you," she answered. "Everyone does, after all." Maggie shook her head and spoke as though she was just now coming to a realization, "you're a great wizard, Harry. So much better than…than all these _normal_ people. You're powerful and you're a leader- not just because you're smart, or because you know how to give a strong order but because you make people _want_ to follow you. Tyson can see that. Higgins has been telling him about what's going on here. He's terrified of you."

Harry frowned still confused about what she was saying to him, "I'm not a threat to Tyson though, what the hell can I do from here?"

Maggie smiled that same cynical smile, it didn't suit her. "You're meant for great things, Harry Potter. People can't stop fate. We can try. We can fight it, we can run from it and hell, we might even be able to delay it for a while, but eventually? Fate wins. You won't be here forever Harry, someday you're going to do great things and Tyson knows it. They have tried… _everything_ to break you in here and you have stayed strong. In fact you've only earned the others' respect. And not just the inmates, Harry. The Aurors have been talking…and a lot of them aren't so sure that you were ever guilty anymore.

"Higgins and Tyson and the others like them have tried to turn you into this…monster so that they can finally be right about you but…you're better than just being a great wizard Harry. You're a _good_ man. You're the best person I know and I think that terrifies Tyson. I think…I think you can eventually beat something that's great. Eventually…well something better will come along, right? Nothing stays the best forever. But goodness…there's never really any way to fight against something like that. So he wanted to hurt you, he wanted to destroy that goodness in you."

They were still separated from the cold steel bars of the cell but Harry had taken Maggie into his arms as best he could manage, he was alarmed to see that she was just as cold as the bars she was leaning against. "What did he do to you?" Harry choked out, his throat swollen with emotion.

Maggie swallowed and sunk to her knees, Harry following also so that they were huddled on the floor of the prison, trying their best to embrace one another. "He wanted to use me to hurt you. Take away something that was yours by scaring me into hurting you. He really thought that he could turn me against you and that if I broke you...you would be done."

"He wanted information you mean?"

"That was part of it but what I really mean is that he wanted me to _hate_ you and for you to be alone. He wanted you to realize that there is no one that will stand by you, no one to fight for. But…I could never hate you Harry. It is the great honor of my life that I have had the chance to love you."

"Maggie if he didn't sack you... _what did he do_?" Harry asked. Something was very, very wrong- he was sure of it now- and panic was growing inside of him by the second. Maggie was not here in the middle of the night, pale, cold and slightly hysterical because her boss had wanted to break her boyfriend's heart and turn them against one another. He had done something to her.

Maggie broke down in the moment, tears streaming down her beautiful face, gasping sobs erupting from her chest. "I'm sorry Harry. I am so, so sorry. I should have been honest with you from the start and now it's too late…"

Harry was out of his depth. He had been with Maggie for just over a year now. He had seen her upset, he had even seen her cry on a few occasions but never like this- gut-wrenching, semi-hysterical sobs. She was truly miserable and he didn't have the slightest idea how to handle such a thing.

"Maggie," he said gently. "It's alright, or… it will be, I promise you. Now, whatever you did…or didn't do, I can see that you're sorry."

"I deserve to be sorry, Harry. I was stupid and I hurt you because of it."

Harry let out a shuddering breath, struggling for calm. He wasn't angry and he doubted that he would be after she told him what she had done but he was nearly choking on panic. "Whatever you did, I don't think you meant to hurt me. I can forgive a mistake Maggie but you have to tell me what's wrong."

"I was pregnant Harry and I never told you about it."

Harry's jaw dropped, the rest of the world seemed to slide away and he had this feeling of unreality. He supposed on a certain level he knew that this could have been a possibility but never in a thousand years had he given it real consideration before this moment. They had tried to be careful after all, but then Maggie had once told him that nothing was a hundred percent certain.

"Was?" he asked carefully and Maggie nodded miserably. "Almost three months. I would have started showing soon and the secret would have been out but…everything was so complicated. No one could ever know that you were the father and I didn't have any other explanation. I'm not married Harry, I'm not even close to being engaged. My parents…the Ministry. The Wizarding World isn't exactly known for being progressive."

Harry nodded slowly. He knew that unwed mothers were just another of the many outdated taboos that the Wizarding World still clung to.

"I knew that you would have wanted to do the right thing Harry. I knew that you would love our child but…Harry there was _nothing_ you could have done. And the more I thought about telling you the more I thought about how cruel it would be for you know that there was a child of yours that you couldn't raise."

Harry swallowed. He had spent months feeling inadequate in his relationship to Maggie. There were so many things that he was unable to give her. Even the simple, common pleasures of a normal relationship had been impossible for them: having a meal together, being seen together, meeting her parents. He had known that one day her desire to have children and start a real family would drive them apart but he had foolishly never considered the idea of her starting a family with him- a family he couldn't be a part of.

"I have money Maggie," Harry whispered. "It's still mine even if I'm stuck in Azkaban, I would have taken care of you."

"I know that Harry. That's what I told Daniel- he was the only person that I told about the baby. He thought that I was crazy for deciding to keep it."

Harry blinked, he had taken her apologies and guilt and thought that she had terminated the pregnancy. He wouldn't have blamed her if she had, it wasn't what he wanted even if he couldn't ever see the child he would have liked knowing that he or she was out there living a full life, but he knew that it would have been her decision. He had no right to an opinion given his situation but somehow the fact that she had wanted to keep their child filled him with a feeling of gratitude.

"You were planning on keeping it?"

"Of course!" she answered fiercely before a look of guilt crossed her features again. "Well…if I'm being honest when I first found out…I thought about not having it. I have a friend that had an abortion a few years back. We had just graduated Hogwarts, she was still trying to train for her career in the Ministry…it was just terrible timing. She once told me that she regretted having to make the decision, but she never regretted the decision, does that make sense?"

Harry nodded silently. Maggie took a deep breath before continuing, "I'm not against the right for women to choose, but Harry…this was _our_ child. Yours and mine. I didn't care that it was going to be hard or that my parents were probably never going to speak to me again…I wanted this baby more than anything."

Harry grabbed her hand and squeezed it for support. "You could have told me Maggie. You shouldn't have had to carry all of this by yourself. It wasn't right."

She smiled at him, "I wanted to tell you…and it wasn't just me protecting you, I was so scared Harry and the minute I said it all out loud it was going to be…real."

Harry nodded again, he took a deep breath before he could continue. "What does all this have to do with Tyson?"

Maggie fell silent. This wasn't like her. Harry was the one that was known for considering what he was going to say before speaking. He was the quiet one, she almost never stopped talking once she had something to say.

"Tyson raped me, Harry."

Harry's hand tightened compulsively onto hers, his body trying to make a fist even though he was still gripping something. She winced at the pain but said nothing, Harry dropped her hand quickly. "I'm sorry, did I hurt you?"

She smiled ruefully, "No Harry, at this point I can't be hurt anymore."

"What happened? I thought…everyone always talks about how…great Tyson is."

Maggie sighed, her eyes closed and she looked very pale in the small amount of light they had to see by. "So did I Harry. He always seemed so…genuine. Like he wanted to be Minister because it was the right thing to do- but that was all a lie. Tyson wanted power and when he realized that even in prison you were going to have more than him…he wanted to find a way to crush you. He's the one that had the guards target Felix, Harry. He wanted to have the other prisoners realize that it was dangerous for them to be associated with you. But that didn't happen. These men love you, Harry, Tyson realizes that but he also realized that you love too. And he wanted to use it to hurt you."

"He sounds like Voldemort," Harry muttered. Harry remembered, so many years ago now, Dumbledore trying to explain to him that love was a power that Voldemort had never understood. Tyson, however, seemed all the more intimidating because he did understand love- and how to use it as a weapon.

"But I still don't understand Maggie. What did he think? That if he attacked you…I wouldn't love you anymore?"

Maggie shrugged, "I'm not sure that he had a master plan- not really anyway. First he offered to pay me to spy on you for him. He seems…paranoid to me. He's convinced that you're going to create this uprising and build up a base from in here. But after I got your plans out of you he wanted me to...toy with you. Build you up and then break your heart and at the same time tear out your support from the other prisoners. I counsel a lot of them and he thinks I can convince them that you're a danger to them. Of course I think he's overestimating my influence on them...they only listen to me because of you in the first place."

Harry looked at her dumbfounded. "I still don't see why he would go through all this trouble. Why does he care if a bunch of prisoners on life sentences like me or not? How can that possibly affect the Minister of Magic?"

"And if it was just the prisoners than I would agree with you but I think…." And this time she really did smile. "I think he's gotten wind of some of the rumors that are circulating among the new recruits."

Harry frowned, he hadn't heard about any such rumors and was generally rather well informed about the goings on in Azkaban. "What rumors?"

"I told you Harry, you're a good man. And you stand out. People notice that- even when they don't want to. I've heard them too, I just didn't want to start telling you before they started becoming more concrete. I didn't want to get your hopes up or anything but more than a few of the recruits are looking back on what happened and asking a lot of questions. They see how you are Harry. They see that you're strong, and that you don't give in easily and they've started asking themselves if you're really the kind of person that would bow down and serve someone else. They've seen that you care about people and they wonder how you could have used Unforgivable or killed an innocent woman. You've made too big an impression them not to raise a few questions.

"Tyson started hearing this and he knows that's it's really only a matter of time for you to get out of here- one way or another. You either escape and fight against him or the people will demand that you get another trial, a fair one this time and then not only would you be released but you would be a hero. Tyson can't have that, he wants you scared. He wants you broken."

"And he thought that he could use you to do it?" Harry asked quietly. "Maggie…I am so sorry. I knew that what we were doing would be dangerous for you and I did it anyway. It was selfish and it was stupid- you never should have been in danger."

Maggie shook her head, "you let me make my own decisions Harry. You respected me enough not to protect me from myself, I love that about you. I was the one that was stupid. I…I provoked Tyson, Harry. Once I realized that he was really going after you, I taunted him. Made him into a joke. Told him that only a weak man would be scared of someone that was locked up and discredited already. I made him so angry that his real colors came out and he seemed to just...lose all control and then…I don't think he had planned it. He just... snapped, called me a 'stupid bitch that needed to learn my place.' Told me that he would teach me a lesson and maybe then I could teach it too you as well. I was so stupid."

"Maggie you are not stupid. He is for forcing himself on you. You were right, he's a weak man that needs to feel powerful by going after people weaker than him, but none of that is your fault. You know that, you've told me plenty of times," he tried gently. Maggie was a trained counselor. She knew that rape was never the victim's fault. She knew that one person was never responsible for another's person's actions, at least never entirely. She just needed to remember for herself now.

Maggie trembled in denial though. "Harry I knew that I was pregnant. I knew that I needed to be careful. I should have just…just let him do it and forget the whole thing but instead I fought him. I _fought_ and I fought and…" she shrugged and the tears came once again. "I didn't hurt him. I think he even liked that I didn't make it easy, he got off on it but…our baby is dead and it is all my fault. I am so sorry Harry."

Harry stared at her guilt-ridden face in horror, "this is _not_ your fault Maggie," he repeated to her again. "None of this is your fault. You didn't fall in line with what he wanted so he decides that he has the right to take advantage of you and you honestly believe that you were _stupid_ not to fight back?"

"I shouldn't have been worrying about just myself…I should have put our child first. That's what a good...a good mum does…" she broke off in another choked sob.

"You didn't do anything to hurt the baby on purpose Maggie. I know that and _you_ know that too. You have never hurt anyone in your life. You tell me all the time that I'm a good person but I'm only good because of _you_ Maggie. You…make it easy to love you. You make me want to be the person that's worthy of loving you."

Maggie shook her head and she sighed again. She appeared to be drifting, emotionally exhausted. Harry wondered when the last time she had slept was. "Harry… I love you but…I was never your true love. Don't confuse a shocking lack of options with the love of a lifetime. You were never selfish to be with me Harry but there were times when I was a bit selfish for being with you. You were mine, completely and…the truth was I enjoyed that. Much more than I should have done. But all of that is over now."

Harry shook his head, his heart clenching in anticipation, "please Maggie. Don't push me away. I…I understand if you blame me for all this but…I don't want you to go through it all alone. I want you to be able to…to grieve I guess with someone that understands what you lost."

Maggie coughed lightly, and once again shook her head, "No Harry. I don't want to grieve and I don't want to get over this. I want it to be over. Before I came here I took a potion. I'll be dead in a little less than an hour from now. I didn't want you to be able to change my mind about it, I've already done all the thinking I want to, but I owed you an explanation and that's why I'm here."

The breath was punched from Harry's lungs and his hands were shaking, he felt as though he was about to throw up, there was a rushing in his ears.

"Maggie…" he whispered desperately. "No…you…you can't do this. What can I do? How can I stop this?"

She smiled briefly, shaking her head, "there's nothing you can do. There's no antidote to this kind of potion. I am sorry Harry. It was selfish of me to come here like this but…even though I don't think I'm the love of your life you were the love of mine and I…I needed to see you one last time."

"I do love you Maggie, I don't want you to do this. You're…you are the only good thing in my life. How am I going to go on without you?" and suddenly he felt angry, because it was selfish of her. Maggie had so many people in her life that cared about her, so many things to look forward to. She had family and friends and her patients, she had a future. But she was all that he had in the world.

"You're going to keep doing all the things that you've been doing Harry. And you're not even going to do them for me. You keep going Harry. That's who you are, it's not even something that you stop to think about. You would never give up like this. One day… _you_ are going to be one to stop Voldemort and I think you know that much but listen to me, you are going to do so much more than that. You are going to get rid of people like Tyson and any other corrupt Minister. You're going to save us all Harry, and I will be so proud of you."

"You won't be anything Maggie- you won't be here!" He shouted at her both in anger and grief, eyes blurred with tears.

"That's not true Harry, a part of me will always be with you. There is just one thing that I want you do for me, just for me. I know you're going to be awfully busy saving the world but, if you have the time, can you also look out for Daniel? I wrote him a letter, he'll know everything but…he's going to need you."

Harry wanted to tell her to go to hell. He wanted to tell her that if she were actually worried about the people in her life than she wouldn't be doing this. But he couldn't. In spite of his anger, of his loss, he knew that he couldn't really blame her.

"I'll do my best to protect Daniel," he promised quietly.

Harry said very little after that. He was still angry, resentful that she would lay all of this burden at his feet- expecting him to save the world when it was a struggle for him at times to stand upright- and then not even be there support him. Maggie's voice faded in and out but her quiet voice used the time she had left to share everything that she could with him. She spoke about her pregnancy. Wanting to share all those private details that she had wanted Harry to know about but had been unable to share with him.

Her voice gradually grew softer, her breathing harsher. Harry held onto her as much as he could through the cold metal bars that separated him from the world. She had planned things well. She had given herself a portkey that would activate the moment her heart stopped beating. Azkaban had enchantments on it that prevented portkeys from working on any living thing within its borders so that prisoners weren't able to get family members or friends to sneak them in a means of escape but a corpse was able to be moved easily. It was even encouraged so that the bodies did not have to be disposed of later.

Maggie took her last breath and her eyes opened briefly. She was a truly beautiful girl and Harry knew that she was wrong about what she had told him- she was the love of his life. And then- just like so many things before her, she was gone and Harry was left bitterly alone in the darkness.

 **A/N: Thank you all so much for the reviews, I love hearing your reactions to the story. Quite a few of guessed that things would not end up well for Harry and Maggie. This was an intense chapter and one that was difficult to write and I know it's a sensitive subject for a lot of people. This is the end of the Azkaban arc so to speak and the next chapter picks up with the Order and what has happened in the roughly four years Harry has been in prison.**

 **Quick note about the Order though: I wanted to say that no one outside of Azkaban or directly in the Minister's office knows about the Auror Training Program. It was secretly implemented and all participants are sworn to secrecy in order to protect Tyson's image so in the minds of most the Order Harry has actually had an** _ **easier**_ **time in Azkaban than he once would have when the Dementors were at full strength.**


	6. Do You Remember Our Old Friend?

**Chapter 6: Do You Remember Our Old Friend?**

 **April 20, 2000**

Hermione Granger closed the bedroom door quietly, shoes in hand and quickly straightened her rather wrinkled skirt so that the slit was in the back where it belonged instead of running up her left thigh as it was at the moment. She would need to return home later in order to change into robes for work, she had spent an unusual night in muggle world and needed to dress for the occasion and she grimaced slightly at her appearance in the hall mirror, trying unsuccessfully to flatten the lapel on her blouse. It had been a while since she had worn muggle clothing and she found that they were harder to put back on after her...evening activities than simple robes generally were. She patted herself, trying to make sure that she had not forgotten anything, nearly five months she had been in Thurston's bed and she had yet to leave any personal belongings at his flat. She wondered what it said about their relationship that she honestly had no desire to start.

Thurston Grey was still sleeping in his bed as she made her quiet exist and she would rather him be under the impression that she had either left earlier in the evening or just before day break several hours from now. Another comment on the state of things between could be made about the fact that such behavior was the norm between them- they rare woke up together in the mornings. However, at the moment it made things easier, having a conversation about what she could be up to after midnight in the middle of the week was not something she wanted to experience. Thurston would not approve of her involvement with the Order of the Phoenix and knew that she was well aware of his hatred of anything that operated outside the law. It would start a fight that she was not sure they would recover from and while the two of them were not in love by any means, it would certainly make things uncomfortable at the office.

His love for law and order in all things was something that once upon a time Hermione had thought had applied to herself as well, but lately she was starting to feel that claiming such a belief was becoming almost alarmingly hypercritical. She worked in the legal department of the Ministry, and yet worked for a secret organization that was determined to keep its business as separate as possible from the official channels. The bedroom she was currently sneaking out of belonged to a man that was technically her boss and both were determined to keep the relationship as secret as possible. His family was determined to fix him up with a Pureblood with the hope of a good match. Her parents were under the impression that she was not seeing anyone at all. Law and Order indeed.

A few years ago if someone had told Hermione that she would be carrying on a secret affair with her superior and that, worse than that, was the fact that if she were being honest neither one of them was interested in more than a physical relationship with no real emotions attached, she would have called them a liar. She had always believed that she would do things the right way. Finish Hogwarts with top grades, get a good job at the Ministry, and then she would work herself up the ranks with hard work and her intelligence. She would fall in love and get married to the one man that she cared about most, the only man that she would ever sleep with. Slowly those goals had started shifting.

She had been named Head Girl…but by that time at Hogwarts she had had almost nothing but schoolwork to sustain her anyway and somehow the achievement had not met her expectations. She had always envisioned that she would somehow make a real impact on Hogwarts. That the decisions she would make, would change things for the better. Instead she had been met with a low level mutiny by many of the prefects that had been jealous of her positions and felt no loyalty in backing her up. Most of her job had consisted of scheduling and trying to break up petty arguments over teenage romances and stolen supplies. She had found little joy in it. She had spent most of the year largely isolating herself in the library, preparing for her NEWTs. She had done well, top grades that had gotten her a rather good entry level job at the ministry...for a Muggleborn. She knew that Minister Tyson had done wonders to safeguard the government against prejudice and she had been told by many that things were better than they had once been- though no one was terribly specific about how- but being a Muggleborn meant that she had to work twice as hard for half the recognition.

But Hermione had never shied away from hard work. She came in early, stayed late and made sure that her work was most well researched. Her reports the most organized and detailed. Except that many of the senior members had been known to take credit for her work. It was only a little more into a year at her new job when Hermione started to grow resentful about her achievements and hard work constantly being either taken for granted or attributed to someone else.

And then Thurston Grey had become her new supervisor and he _had_ noticed her hard work and the fact that even if she was young her ideas were still sound. Hermione was not quite sure how it had happened. He was good looking, successful, and popular. None of the things she had would have thought would matter to her. In fact, when she took the time to acknowledge that she was in fact attracted to all of these qualities, at least superfluously, she was quite ashamed of herself. But then he would owl her, or brush past her in the corridor of the Ministry and she would find herself agreeing to meet him somewhere. Perhaps it was just the fact that for the first time in a very long time she had someone that actually nice to her outside of simple polite conversation or when they had a direct question. Perhaps she had just been lonely.

Hermione pushed any remorse she had for first being involved with her Thurston at all, and then lying to him aside and concentrated at what she needed to do. It had been a last minute meeting and she had been unable to make a plausible excuse for getting out of their plans for the night. Their coupling that night had been strange and rather uncomfortable for her as she, at least, had known she had largely agreed to go to bed with him to appease the guilt that she felt.

She apparated outside of Grimmauld Place and let herself in through the door. The security had needed to be modified. The old house was still the safest place to conduct their meetings due to all of the enchantments on it but the fact that the owner of the house was not currently in residence had created more than a few problems at first. Luckily Dumbledore had been the secret keeper of the Order, not Sirius and while the title of the house technically rested with Harry Potter, there had been a variety of spells and court injunctions involving the goblins so that the house was effectively Dumbledore's following Harry's conviction. Though Harry technically retained ownership, the Order was still able to make use of it without fear of outside interference.

"Did you hear what this meeting is about?" Ron greeted her without preamble.

Hermione frowned, "nice to see you as well Ron," she answered pointedly. It was sad thing to admit but her relationship with Ron had suffered greatly after the betrayal of their friend. The three of them had been a unit- with Harry usually the moderator between the two of them. Without him as a buffer, a calming influence on their two extremes, the two now-former-Gryffindors had found it harder and harder to bounce back from their many disagreements. Sixth Year had been fraught with blow ups and progressively less-effective make-ups. By Seventh Year they had effectively been ignoring one another. There had been no dramatic end to their friendship and Hermione felt that Ron shared her feelings in the matter- that if pressed for a definition of their relationship either one of them would have said that they were friends, but it statement was mere habit at this point. The trust between them had been broken with the loss of the third in their little trio. Hermione had found it difficult to trust anyone after that day in the courtroom.

After Hogwarts, such petty arguments had seemed less important in light of their work for the Order but the closeness that they had once shared was gone, replaced with politeness pleasantries or a few nods here and there, as though they were mere colleagues and not once best friends as they had been for nearly 6 years. This bunt question had been the first time Ron had directly spoken to her in months.

Ron had the sense to blush slightly at the rebuke. "Right sorry, but Dumbledore's patronus sounded urgent and I was just wondering if there was any news yet."

Hermione shook her head. The war had progressed slower than they had anticipated. They had thought that after Voldemort had been pushed out into the open following the battle in the Department of Mysteries it would have been only a matter of time until he would start taking over on a large scale. The first few weeks of summer after their Fifth Year Hermione knew that the Order had been bracing for the first of the full scale attacks. Instead, they had learned about the Ministry storming Privet Drive and finding Harry, covered in his own blood, surrounded by his traumatized relatives and a dead neighbor who had only tried to help him.

Harry's arrest had been a shock to them all. Ron's parents along with the rest of the Order had been positive that there must have been a mistake. The boy was under a spell, there was polyjuice involved, any explanation would do except the horrible truth. Harry had turned on them. No one could have breached the wards without permission. There was positive match for spells on Harry's wand, and no one else could have used it as effectively. He had been brought to the holding cells directly from the scene of the crime and had been watched constantly by an Auror, there was no use of Polyjuice. Harry had even confessed under veritaserum that he had cast an Unforgivable. There was no use denying it. Harry was guilty. He had lied to them. The Aurors had proved just how much he had lied about.

When they lost Harry it had felt as if they had already lost the war. He was supposed to have been their champion. He was supposed to have been the one that would defeat Voldemort for good and Hermione had always planned to be by his side when he did it. She, along with so many others, had braced for full attack that had never come. Instead it had seemed that after Harry's arrest the war itself had come to a suspicious standstill. At least temporarily. And they were at a loss as to explain why.

Remus' theory was that most of Voldemort's long term plans had included Harry as his second in command. Malfoy and Goyle Seniors- both captured back in their Fifth year- had confirmed to the Ministry that the 'Dark Lord' had been planning for Potter to become his greatest asset. When those plans had been discovered and foiled prematurely it had sent all of his plans into a tailspin. That was the part that was still hard for Hermione to believe, even after all these years. She had known Harry. Talked with him, fought with him, and spent more sleepless nights than she cared to remember worrying about him. Once upon a time she would have sworn that Harry would have been the last person in the world to turn dark.

But that was before she had known just how much Harry had been hiding from them all. Years of terrible abuse that he had never told them about. It had been a scary and terrible realization for her the day she had discovered that she had not truly known her 'best' friend at all. Part of her didn't blame a scared, abused little boy for not coming to anyone for help. It was natural, and she had read enough to know that victims of abuse often lied and concealed their injuries, protecting their abusers. She wanted to be understanding. She wanted to forgive him for striking back against the people that had hurt him for so long.

But the other logical part of her knew that if Harry had learned to lie that well at such a young age, such deception could have been used against them. Harry had lied to all of them and even she- who prided herself on seeing what everyone else could not- had never suspected him for a second. Worse still was the knowledge that if she was being honest with herself, one thing she was sure about was that Harry truly would have been one of their biggest assets had he remained loyal to their side.

There was never any denying that Harry was powerful. Not only had he managed to produce a patronus in their Third Year but he had employed it successfully against a _hundred_ Dementors- a feat that she was sure she wouldn't have been able to do even now, when she was two years out of school. And that wasn't the only example, while Harry had never been the fastest to learn their spells in school, his were the almost always the most powerful once he had learned the method. He had slayed a basilisk. He had won the Triwizard. Harry could have been a great wizard if only he had trusted them. If only he had not let his anger and his hate drive him to revenge. Hermione wished that she could be well and truly angry with him for his choices but mostly when she considered it all, she was indescribably sad.

"Do you think the Ministry is still intact?" Ron asked nervously as they continued on their way to the basement kitchen.

Hermione nodded more confidentially than she felt, "we would have heard sooner if it had completely fallen. Tyson is strong, and he's a good Minister. I'm sure that's not it."

The war had progressed differently than they had anticipated but no less viciously. For the past four years Voldemort had first attempted to target key officials in the Ministry. However, new security measures under the leadership of Ivan Tyson had been extremely successful in protecting their people. The Aurors were not only stronger in number but there had been whispers of new training measures that were more effective than ever before. Top strategists anticipated which departments the Dark Lord was most likely to attack and together the Ministry had been inordinately good at protecting themselves.

However, Voldemort was not an easy man to defeat. No one knew where his base was located and his Inner Circle had proven to be impossible to find. They had moved on to gathering several expert in several different fields of rare magic. Wandlore, runes, potions- the best and brightest of Britain were either kidnapped for their skills or killed outright to prevent the knowledge from reaching others. The attacks were seemingly at random and impossible to predict until the dreaded Dark Mark was seen in the sky. A never-ending source of terror to remind the people that they would never be fully safe until the dark wizard was truly dead.

However, in recent weeks it had seemed that at long last Voldemort was ready to take more definitive steps. He had become bolder. His attacks were frequent and more devastating in nature. In the past month alone Hermione had heard about 4 different large raids in which dozens of younger recruits were captured. Muggleborns in particular had suffered from a string of disappearances and home invasions, though very few had actually resulted in death, thankfully. The attacks had seemed random and Mad-Eye especially was growing increasingly paranoid about what their plans actually entailed.

Thankfully the Order and the Ministry had been the clear victors in these recent battles- capturing far more people than the Death Eaters were able to kill. Unfortunately, they had only captured lower level recruits. No one of the Inner Circle had been present and while there was obvious comfort in seeing the weak resources that the enemy was now using, several people were troubled by the sheer _numbers_ that they were seeing. Dozens of recruits and Death Eaters in each raid.

Ron glanced at Hermione, his look saying that he knew well enough that she was merely guessing but chose not to argue. He nodded and followed her into the kitchen. There was the usual chatter and they could both see that room was a bit more crowded than usual. With busy schedules it was not uncommon for several members to miss any given meeting but it seemed that the urgent summons had made quite a few people nervous and had just about all of them had managed to dump their plans for the night.

Their numbers had swelled in the past couple of years so that they were no longer the dozen or so oddballs that had made up the Order in Hermione's Fifth Year. There were still less than 50 altogether, but it was a younger group that had joined, too young to fight in the last war and eager to prove themselves. She knew a few of the original members felt that the younger fighters were overly confident or else untested in real battle but the new blood was welcome in her mind. It gave her confidence to know that while no one was quite certain how many Death Eaters were out there, they also had a few tricks up their sleeves and her generation was still committed to fighting against Voldemort no matter what the cost.

Ron and Hermione both of them made their way over to one of the new members, an Auror that Dumbledore had personally recommended after he had seen some of his work in the field and realized that the man was more interested in saving muggle lives than following orders. Most of the Order members had taken to the new addition quickly. He was a funny man with a good heart and was the kind of person that made friends easily and kept them for a lifetime. Hermione remembered being surprised when she had learned that he had been a Ravenclaw in school as he had certainly seemed to fit the bill of a quintessential Hufflepuff.

"Daniel, how are you?" Hermione asked. The older man turned and greeted Hermione with a warm smile but his eyes were sad. She realized that she had not seen the man for several weeks but she thought that he looked rather thin and his face was slightly pale.

"I've been alright, I suppose." His voice was heavy with regret and Hermione felt that ripple of fear that she had been trying to keep down since she had received the summons for the meeting spike through her once more.

"Did something happen?" she asked carefully. It was never safe to assume that someone hadn't been attacked but it was delicate subject. Conversations like these were never easy and Hermione was often forcibly reminded that tact had never been a strong suit of hers. She had certainly improved from the bossy little eleven-year-old that had often started conversations with her peers with a correction of what they were doing but she still felt the awkwardness of certain situations. She knew that she often pressed for all the wrong information, more comfortable speaking about facts and logic than words of comfort even when she meant to offer some anyway.

"It's been a hard month…I lost my best friend."

"Oh," Hermione said covering her mouth in a combination of surprise and sympathy. "Was…she muggleborn?" she asked.

Ron shot her a glance that showed that he did not think that that was the proper question to ask but Hermione felt a morbid desire to know. To see for herself just how many muggleborns like herself were being hunted down. Life at the Ministry was getting more and more uncomfortable for her and recently she had begun to worry about her parents. The fact that they were muggles that knew about the magical world made them a threat. When she had voiced these growing fears to Thurston seeking his opinion as one of the top advisors in the DMLE, she had not found him particularly reassuring.

Thurston was a Pureblood, and though not openly prejudiced, he often disregarded the feelings and ideas of muggles as being equal to that of wizards. He was of the opinion that the Ministry would handle everything and the best that she could do was to keep all information about the war away from them, 'lest it just upset them.'

Daniel smiled briefly in an effort to show that he didn't mind her question before shaking her head. "No…she was a halfblood, and it wasn't related to the war." Daniel shook his head, "I spend so much time worrying about the war and the Death Eaters that I never even considered that something else could happen. We went through Hogwarts together, she was a Healer, actually she was the lead Healer at Azkaban. I've talked about her, did you know Maggie Clark?"

"She was the one that Ginny met right?" Ron asked, his forehead creased in thought. "I remember you asking me if I wanted to come out with you and some of the others but I was working that night."

Hermione vaguely remembered Ginny mentioning that quite a few of the younger Order members had gotten together with a large group and gone down to the pub for a night out a few months ago. Hermione had only learned about this little gathering after the fact as Ginny rarely invited her anywhere these days but in the retelling she did remember the redhead talking about the spectacular time she had had with Daniel's bright, bubbly friend.

Ginny had raved about the 'cute little blonde girl', which Hermione had found funny since Ginny was rather petite herself, that loved to dance and kept everyone laughing the whole night. Maggie had been described as a great storyteller and as a 'Ravenclaw so friendly you'd swear she was a Hufflepuff until you got her started on her job and then you realize why she's a Ravenclaw.' Apparently it was something she and Daniel were much alike in personality.

"Yeah," Daniel smiled softly at the memory of better times. "Nearly five months ago now, she and Ginny hit it off, you would've thought they had been friends forever. I know that both of them had wanted to get together again with her but..." he shrugged as if it say, 'you know how it is.' And she did. It wasn't like Hogwarts where you could see your friends every day.

Daniel elaborated on her own thoughts, "People get busy, you're schedules don't match up and all of the sudden even though you planned to get together right away you realize its been a few months. I think both of them kind of forgot to make the next move after a while but I know that they got on together. It was funny because Mags was never one to have a lot of 'girl' friends if you know what I mean, I get the idea that Gin's the same way."

Ron gave a kind of grimace at that, and Hermione knew it was aimed at the fact that far from having 'boy' friends, his younger sister had had far too many 'boyfriends' for his taste. Still he had the good grace to say, "yeah well I think you can maybe blame that a bit on us. Even I admit it's not always easy having six older brothers."

"Really?" Hermione asked slightly amused, "you're willing to admit that."

"Yeah well as long as Ginny's not here to hear me say it, of course," Ron answered with a theatrical glance over his shoulder as though scared of being overheard and Hermione smiled softly. It was times like these when she wondered how she and Ron had lost touch so easily after being friends for so long. It hurt her to think that the two of them might have only been friends because of their connection to Harry...who had turned on them it. It made it seem as though every friendship she had ever had been nothing but a lie. She knew that wasn't the case, at the very least she didn't think that it had always been a lie for Harry, and she and Ron had never purposefully deceived one another, but the worries nagged at her. The three of them had been so close, it had seemed to her that nothing could come between the three of them and they would remain friends for the rest of their lives, and yet everything had fallen apart so easily.

Michael grinned appreciatively but his mind was brought back to more unpleasant matters quickly enough. He took a deep breath before he continued to tell his story, "But to answer your question Hermione, she wasn't attacked…well she wasn't killed." He added delicately and Hermione felt that familiar glint of curiosity course through her. She stifled the impulse knowing it wasn't her place to ask.

"She was injured during a…struggle and she lost a baby. She couldn't stand the loss and…" Daniel cleared his throat uncomfortably before saying quietly, "she killed herself."

Ron looked at the Auror with surprise, his mouth gaping slightly and Hermione felt herself at a sudden loss of words. "Oh…I'm…I'm so sorry."

Daniel nodded, his voice was slow and haunted with still new grief. "It's…really a waste. Maggie….she was one of the best people I knew. Smart, beautiful. Nicest person in the world. But she really wanted to start a family, she loved that kid before it was even born. It was hard for her but...she loved that kid," he muttered, nearly to himself.

"That's terrible," Hermione whispered, shaking her head in disbelief. She couldn't imagine someone doing that and her mind shied away from the idea of someone ending their misery with such permanence. Instead she did what her mind normally did, seek out facts. "Was it one of the prisoners? Did they hurt her?"

Daniel blinked, looking up from his distracted thoughts, "Oh…no. It's ironic really," he said quietly, almost to himself, but at their questioning glances he started to explain further, "when Mags first started there they were pretty terrible to her, they seemed to hate and she really hated them. Can't blame her. It's a miserable place, Azkaban. Pretty sure that she nearly quit about 10 times in that first month but... she stuck it out. But after a while…well most of them turned out to treat her decently enough. I suppose they finally managed to see that she was helping them." His voice was thoughtful but it seemed to Hermione that there was a lot that he wasn't saying out loud.

"What do you mean by ironic?" Hermione asked, feeling confused. "Who attacked your friend?"

Daniel shifted, "it's... complicated and if I'm being honest I don't know everything and I guess you could say the...investigation is still ongoing... but I do know it wasn't a prisoner."

Hermione and Ron exchanged a confused glance, both of them could see that Myers knew more than he was saying but for some reason he was reluctant to give them more information. She wondered why it was that he was willing to share as much as he had with them and yet seemed unwilling to name who he obviously believed to be the guilty party. She could only assume that he was bound by oaths as Auror, if the investigation was still ongoing than he would not be allowed to talk about the case no matter what. It Instead of pushing, they chose a different tact.

"What about her husband?" Ron asked gently. Hermione winced, losing your child must have been bad enough, especially given the circumstances involved, but losing your wife on top of that and to such...unnecessary means had be agony.

Daniel shook his head, "it's a complicated situation," he said vaguely. "Her boyfriend…" he bit his lip in thought. Hermione noticed that Ron's eyes widened and she was once again reminded that the Wizarding World was a very differnet place than the muggle world. While unwed mothers were perhaps criticized, especially if they were young, in the muggle world, they were not uncommon. In fact, for many people it was even common place to forgo marriage entirely and simply choose to raise an 'untraditional' family. For wizards it was different. Children outside of marriage were heavily looked down upon, despite the fact that mistakes obviously happened (though not as frequently as in the muggle world) and she could see the clearly that Ron was trying to conceal his utter shock at discovering that Daniel's friend had not been married.

Daniel gave them a bit of a smile, as though to say that he understood what they were too polite to say. "I know... but honestly, he's a good guy. I gave Maggie a hard time for being with him, and I gave _him_ a harder time. Looking back…I think I was a bit too hard on him when the truth is, he really wanted to do the right thing for her…at any rate they were never able to get married. I found out later that he didn't even know about the baby until it was too late. She…she planned it so that she died in his arms right after she told him everything."

"The bloke didn't even try and save her?" Ron asked incredulously.

"Mags was smart. She was an expert at potions. She used something that he wouldn't be able to stop, no one would have. She gave herself plenty of time to say what she wanted to say to him, and then she just…passed on."

Hermione frowned but bit her lip from saying anything. Personally she found the idea of going in front of someone that loved you and killing yourself before their very eyes and then preventing them from stopping you cruel in the extreme. It was just…selfish to make that person a part of your pain. She couldn't imagine what had gone through that poor man's mind when he realized that not only had he lost a child he hadn't known about, but the woman he loved was taking her own life and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The very thought made her want to cry.

"How…how did you find out what happened? Did her boyfriend tell you?" Ron asked carefully.

Daniel shook his head, "Maggie wrote me a letter explaining everything that she had done. She wanted me to know the whole truth so that I wouldn't blame the wrong people or be left wondering. I just…I wish more than anything that she would have come to me before everything that happened. Trusted me enough to let me help her."

Hermione nodded sadly, unsure of what to say in such a situation. There seemed to be no words.

Luckily the meeting was set to begin. Dumbledore called them all to order but did not waste time with the usual banalities. The crowded room quieted at once, everyone could see that Dumbledore was unusually serious tonight.

"Thank you all for assembling so quickly, I apologize for the urgent summons but there has been a development that unfortunately we are unable to ignore. I have related to you all the nature of Voldemort's temporary immortality, have I not?"

Hermione shivered at the memory of the conversation that the Order had had 6 months beforehand. Dumbledore had revealed to them all that he was working under the suspicion that Voldemort was using Horcruxes (plural) in order to survive. It was a subject that he had been very reluctant to bring up, even with the members of the Order, as he felt that nothing less than the highest level of discretion was needed for such a sensitive topic. He had required everyone to sign a blood contract- much like the curse Hermione had used during the DA in their Fifth Year to ensure that no one betrayed them, but much stronger. It was now impossible for anyone in the Order to discuss the existence of the Horcruxes with anyone other than the other people that signed the contract. If You-Know-Who were to have any suspicion that they were after the pieces of the soul he had placed in his own twisted idea of safe-keeping than they were done for.

There were grim nods around the table at the reminder that they had yet to uncover a single Horcrux. Five pieces, one of them- ironic as it was- destroyed by Harry, the others all lost.

"The good news is that we believe we have discovered the location of one of Voldemort's Horcruxes," Dumbledore began. There were looks of surprise exchanged around the table.

"Where is it?" Mrs. Weasley asked.

"Have we recovered it yet?" George asked with even more urgency.

Dumbledore shook his head, his face grave. "To answer your first question the Horcrux- we believe it's a locket, one that once belonged to Salazar Slytherin and what was once a poor woman's last valuable possession before giving birth in the most desperate of situations."

Hermione frowned as he put the pieces together, "Voldemort's mother?"

Dumbledore smiled slightly at her, "indeed Miss Granger. As for its current location, it is in a cave that Tom Riddle once used magic in as a boy to scare some muggle children. It was one of the first times he was able to use his powers in such a manner and it was undoubtedly memorable for him. Now after many years we have finally answered the first question, where to find a Horcrux? The second question becomes more complicated, who do we destroy it? Kingsley, Alastor and myself have all attempted to break through the defenses of Lord Voldemort but unfortunately we have been unsuccessful."

"You weren't able to break them down?" McGonagall asked with surprise. Hermione inwardly smiled, she knew that her former Head of House believed the Headmaster capable of overcoming any and all obstacles.

"It appears as though Tom was clever. He has made it so that not only does there need to be blood recognition but the only wand that is capable of activating the opening is Tom's own wand."

There were several grumbled protests. They had been searching for months upon months for one of Voldemort's tethers to this world, only to find a place that was impossible to enter.

Surprisingly it was Ron that spoke next, "Professor…don't you still have Ha-" a harsh cough cut off the word and Ron quickly corrected himself, "Potter's wand? It's a match for You-Know-Who's, wouldn't that work?"

Hermione was shocked that she hadn't thought about it herself. The rest of the Order was certainly surprised. The rest of the Weasleys were looking at Ron sympathetically and she knew that they all realized how hard it was for Ron to even think about his former best friend. Ron had taken the trial hard and Ginny had once told her that the remainder of that summer at the Burrow had been near torture with Ron snapping at everyone and the rest of the family all dealing with their own reactions to the news.

It had been a long time since anyone had willingly brought up Harry Potter.

However, now there were several nods of agreement to Ron's plan but unfortunately Dumbledore did not have good news on that front either. "Very astute Mr. Weasley, however, I too remembered this convenient fact and unfortunately it has not been as helpful as I had once thought it would be."

Hermione remembered that Dumbledore had petitioned the court at the time of Harry's conviction to take control of his wand rather than following the usual tradition of having it snapped. He had explained the unique connection that the wand shared with Voldemort and had been able to convince the Minister that preserving the wand might be imperative to stopping Voldemort's reign of terror.

She had never known Dumbledore to be wrong and was shocked to see that the wand was not the key to their problem.

"What's the problem?" Charlie Weasley asked.

The Headmaster looked thoughtful and rather sad. While many Order members had been livid when they had learned about Harry's betrayal and others had been heartbroken, Dumbledore had been oddly silent on the matter. He had said his piece in court but had never spoken of the matter since. He had never condemned Harry for his actions nor given excuses for his reasons attacking his childhood abusers. However, unlike the others on the very rare occasion these days when Harry's name was brought up, Dumbledore had a look in his eyes that was suspiciously like guilt. It was clear that the man blamed himself even though everyone in the Order felt that this was an unfair burden for him to take.

Hermione supposed that the man not only deeply regretted his role in placing Harry with the Dursleys in the first place but for never spotting the signs of Harry's true loyalties before it was too late. Hermione knew that Dumbledore had largely avoided all contact with Harry during that last year. Had that been the deciding factor? When Harry's Headmaster and mentor, the person that he had always looked to for guidance, even if only peripherally, seemingly turned his back on the Harry, had that been the moment when he had switched sides? Hermione doubted they would ever know but it pained her that the ancient man still felt badly for actions. And yet at the same time...she often blamed him herself. Dumbledore had saved the Wizarding World but he had failed to save her best friend.

But then she had as well. They had all failed him. Harry had turned against them and they had been so blinded by their own troubles that they had never even noticed his problems in the first place.

Dumbledore smiled briefly as he said, "It appears that Harry was more powerful than we ever gave him credit for- no other wizard has been able to operate that wand since his arrest."

"How is that even possible?" Arthur asked in surprise.

"I thought that any wizard could use another's wand?" Hermione asked with a frown. She had heard wizards talk about a connection with the wand that they had but she had never believed in it herself. To her a wand was a tool, magic came from the person and while it was clear that certain people were better matched with certain wands that didn't mean that another wand could not be used if necessary.

Dumbledore turned to her with an indulgent smile and for a moment Hermione saw the reason why this man who was celebrated by so many as the greatest wizard in the world had dedicated his entire adult life to education. He loved passing on knowledge and he easily slid into a lecturing tone that was not at all boring or dry, "Wandlore is a complicated and often imprecise branch of magic. We do know that the wand chooses the wizard. I'm sure you all remember with fondness that moment of connection with the proper wand- but it was the _wand_ that chose to reveal itself to its proper master. Most times we can use another person's wands, if not as well as our own then certainly well enough to perform simple tasks but a borrowed wand will never perform as well as a true match. There have also been times when a borrowed wand is simply unable to perform more complicated or powerful magic. However, for whatever reason, Mr. Potter's particular wand seems to _only_ want to respond to him, and only him even for as simple a task as removing the wand from its case. I must admit it seems to be a unique phenomena."

"And you think it's because he was that powerful?" Arthur asked somewhat skeptically.

"He was underage at the time he was sent to Azkaban. He wasn't even fully qualified, he never reached his majority with that wand," Bill added with a frown. "I've never heard of something like that, not even in Egypt where magic like that was more commonplace."

It was Severus Snape who spoke and several newer members seemed to jump slightly at the silky voice. Snape was usually silent these days during the meetings. His cover as spy had been blown because of Harry and he was in the most vulnerable position of them all. He was still teaching at Hogwarts, still Head of Slytherin despite his true loyalties coming to light but it was clear that the years had been a strain on him. Other than Dumbledore himself, Hermione was fairly certain that Severus Snape was second on the Voldemort's hit list and the thin scar down his left cheek was evidence that he had been forced to fight for his life on more than one occasion. However, it had been more than proven that Snape had always been more than qualified to teach his favored subject of Defense Against the Dark Arts- no one who had attempted to come after him had survived the confrontation.

"It is rare but not unheard of. Powerful wizards attract magic differently than others and while age certainly plays a part, magic itself does not designate a 'coming of age', that is a social construct that we have invented as a society. While Potter himself would have almost certainly have been more powerful at the age of 17 than he was at the age of 15 had he not been sent to Azkaban, that does not preclude him from being powerful enough to create the kind of connection the wand needed to respond in the manner it has."

There was an ominous stillness to the air at that pronouncement. Hermione felt the hairs on her arms rise and she wasn't sure if it was partial fear or awe that she felt. Anger at lost potential or simple sadness at what could have been,

Dumbledore nodded and smiled though it lacked its usual warmth. "Severus is correct but to be clear, it is the wand that is responding in this manner, not Harry's magic. He was unable to do anything to the wand of his own free will, of that I am certain. The phoenix wand built a relationship…dare I say a _respect_ for Harry that no one else has been able to command. As such the phoenix wand is simply refusing to respond to anyone until its true master has returned. As I said…it's highly unique but not singular. There have been reports of such behavior in the past. One wizard by the name of Merlin I believe," he added slightly amused.

There was a murmur around the table. Most of them had spent a lot of time and energy trying to forget about Harry and to have him brought up unexpectedly made them all uncomfortable.

"And there's no way into this cave without the wand?" Tonks asked in surprise, as she bounced a very bored Teddy on her knee. The boy was newly three years old and more interested in exploring the creepy house no matter how dangerous it was than he was in than listening to adults talk. Apparently Tonks hadn't been able to get a babysitter on short notice since Hermione knew that she tried to avoid bringing him to Grimmauld Place if she could avoid it. "Isn't there something else we can do? Why not destroy the whole cave? We want to destroy the artifact anyway."

"While that seems a reasonable plan at the outset it does present several delicate problems. For one, without venturing inside there is no way to ensure that the Horcrux was never moved or even to confirm with certainty that it was there in the first place- though given the protections present, I think we can at least make that assumption. We need to be certain that it is both present in that location and _completely_ destroyed. Which leads to the second point, destroying something of this nature is a very delicate and precise thing. We cannot afford to be rash. We need to be absolutely sure that our goal is accomplished."

There was a moment of thoughtful silence before Fred Weasley spoke, "why don't we just get Harry to do it then?" Hermione shot him a scathing look, more out of reflex than anything else. She usually appreciated the twins' ability to ease the tension in the room with a joke but that was taking things too far. She was shocked to see his face set with unusual gravity.

"That's absurd," his mother muttered, her voice unusually quiet. Hermione knew that Molly had been devastated at the path that Harry had chosen for himself. It had been like losing one of her own children. The woman had lost weight in the months following his arrest and been pale and listless, though Hermione was grateful to see that she was looking healthier these days. However, her hair had more grey in it than it had a mere four years ago and she had lost much of her quick temper. She had aged, and rather badly, and it was grief rather than anger that had brought her to this state.

"I'm being serious," Fred argued with a tone that was rarely heard from him. "You-Know-Who took some of Harry's blood to resurrect himself, right? If that's the case then he would be the only one that could pass the blood test anyway. And if he's the only one that can use the wand…" he shrugged as though the answer was obvious.

"You're actually being serious?" Ron asked, his voice suddenly choked with emotion. He looked too surprised to have formed a full opinion on the matter.

Ginny, however, was sitting next to her brother looking suddenly pale, but her eyes were glittering with fury. It was clear that she wanted no part of this plan and looked ready to berate her older brother for even making the suggestion. A hand came over and rested gently on her knee, obviously trying to offer comfort. It was an intimate gesture and Hermione felt a little surprised that the young man on her right had taken the initiative with her in front of her family. From what she had seen, the two of them had been trying to be discreet- which meant that only _most_ of the Order was aware of their ongoing relationship.

George was unusually thoughtful as he considered his twin's proposal. "It's the only option that we really have right?" he finally said in support of the plan.

"No." Remus said, strong and firm. He looked around as though the rest of them had utterly lost their minds. "We can't trust him, there is no way that we're going to tell one of Voldemort's _Death Eaters_ that we know about the Horcruxes."

Remus had taken Harry's betrayal the hardest. Initially he had denied all the facts, convinced that the Ministry had made a mistake as they had done with Sirius. However, slowly the facts had been laid bare. He had spoken to both Ron and Hermione right before the trial and both of them had confirmed what they had learned from the Aurors during their own questionings. Remus could not believe that after everything they had gone through, after he had lost his last true friend, Harry had been working for Voldemort all along. Hermione rather thought that for Remus it had been a breaking point. The man had lost every person dear to him and due to the most base of betrayals. First Pettigrew had been responsible for James and Lily Potter's deaths and for Sirius' false incarceration and then Harry had been responsible for luring Sirius to the Department of Mysteries and thus his death. She often wondered if Remus often thought about the night when a 13 year old Harry had begged his godfather and Remus to let Peter Pettigrew go in spite of his role in own parents' murder. At the time it had been seen a truly gracious and magnanimous act, and perhaps at the time it truly had been... the problem was when it came to Harry it was impossible to ever know.

The twins, on the other hand, had never seemed to be quite as convinced as the rest of them of Harry's guilt. Hermione thought it might be because unlike herself and Ron, they had never been questioned by the Ministry personally. They had never had every one of their objections answered one by one by the Aurors. Still it was hard to be sure of their feelings, they had always been uncharacteristically closed mouthed about it.

And so it came as no surprise when they insisted on carrying on with their plan. "We don't really have to tell him what we're getting though, do we?" George asked.

"He might have a few questions about why we're getting him out of prison to break into a cave that's being heavily guarded by his precious _master_ ," Ron answered sarcastically.

"And even if he doesn't know exactly what we're getting, if he ever told Voldemort where we took him, than Voldemort would know in a heartbeat what we're up to." Hermione added.

"Who is he going to tell? He'll be back in Azkaban, won't he?" Fred argued.

"Information gets passed in and out of Azkaban all the time. With the new regulations it's not nearly as isolating as it used to be. Potter undoubtedly has all the contacts he needs in there at this point," Hestia Jones pointed out.

"And keep in mind that once we get him out, it becomes much easier for him to escape entirely," Kingsley pointed out.

"There are more than a few ways to keep a wizard under control," Moody answered gruffly. "Magical restraints can do wonders."

"And we can always obviate him after the fact. He can't tell Voldemort what he can't remember," Tonks added thoughtfully, apparently warming to the idea the more she thought about it.

Hermione sighed but didn't comment. She hated that it had come to this. Having to trick Harry into helping them. Worrying that Harry would betray them. There had been a time in her life when she would have trusted him above anyone else. Even Ron, when they had been better friends, had had his moments of doubt. He had turned his back on Harry during the TriWizard Tournament. He had often insulted her or else let petty jealousy or his quick temper get in the way. But Harry had been different. He had always been there for his friends. Always ready to do the right thing.

It was strange to think that the friendship that had meant more to her than anything in the world had been the real casualty that day at Privet Drive.

"I still don't like it. We don't even know if he'll help us," Charlie said.

"If we can get him to agree to help us in exchange for a temporary furlough from Azkaban, I bet he'll jump at the chance. That's the thing about Death Eaters- loyalty isn't their strong suit," Mad-Eye said with distaste. It was no secret how much Mad-Eye hated Death Eaters.

The room was divided. Most of the Order agreed that while they weren't thrilled with the prospect of having to work with a traitor, it was their only option- others felt that under no circumstances should Harry Potter be trusted.

"We could test him first," Draco Malfoy of all people suggested. Malfoy had saved Snape's life when he had ran to him to inform him that Harry had revealed his position as a spy, from that moment forward he had remained loyal to their side. It had been difficult at first. Lucius Malfoy had a loyal Death Eater and it had never been a secret that Draco had looked up to and admired his father. Even Hermione, who after so many years of teasing and torment from the blond boy could never truly like him, had to admit that he had been incredibly brave to break away from his family. To not seek revenge against them when Potter's plan to deliver them all had failed and his father had suffered the consequences.

It had been Snape that had talked to him...though what had been said exactly Hermione would never know, but in the end Draco had been welcomed into their fold and eventually joined the Order. He had proven to be a decent fighter but his true value was in information. The Malfoys had dozens of contacts and when Lucius had been arrested, Draco had assumed his father's position- and all of the intel that came with it. In a way, when Draco had protected their spy from death, he had essentially taken over his role.

"And how do you suppose we do that?" Ron spat. Malfoy may have proved himself worthy in Dumbledore's eyes but to Ron and Hermione he would always be the bullying git they had known back at Hogwarts. Ron especially hated him and constantly questioned every piece of information that the former Slytherin passed them.

Draco shrugged. "Give him a task that we can control better. Potter's a parseltongue, right? Why don't we tell him that we need his help getting information out of one of the runespoors that You-Know-Who has been using in his attacks. We tell him that we need valuable information and that only he can get it for us. If he gives us the proper information than we know that at least he won't attack any us in our sleep. It'll help explain why we need him to the Ministry too. They won't just hand over a prisoner like he's on holiday to us just because we ask."

Snape nodded approval at this plan and it occurred to Hermione that their former potion's professor although he had spoken up about the unusual loyalty of Harry's wand, the man had been silent in regards to his personal feelings about Harry working with them. She would have thought that man would protest it with every fiber of his being. Of everyone in the room, Harry had directly hurt Severus the most. He had not only taken away their spy but put the man's life at risk, and yet their former professor was only pensive as he looked at his former Slytherin. Strange that the same man that had never trusted Harry when everyone had heralded him as savior of the Wizarding World would not speak against him now that he had proven all of Snape's claims about him right.

"Harry's not an idiot though," Neville pointed out. "What's to say that he won't realize that we're testing him so he's honest about what he finds out from the runespoor? Just because he gives up some meaningless information about an attack doesn't mean that he'll stay quiet about something as big as V-V… You-Know-Who splitting his own soul into pieces."

"That's a good point Neville," Bill agreed grimly.

"It could still work, we use that as the excuse to get him out- after all the Ministry still has to sign off and I doubt we want to go tell the Aurors that we've all just really missed the bloke and thought he might want a decent cup of tea. So we tell him and anyone interested that we just need to get information. We test the waters with him and then if we're even remotely satisfied we get him to help us and then obliviate him after the fact. As far as Potter will ever know, we only needed him to talk to a bunch of snakes," Draco explained, a hint of pride in his voice at coming up with such a detailed plan.

The plan was a valid one and more of the members that were on the fence were beginning to lean towards release.

It was along debate and several votes and appeals were done before a plan was in place but in the end- Harry Potter was going to be temporarily released to help the Order of the Phoenix to help take down the man he had betrayed them all for.

A few of them at least appreciated the irony of the situation.

 **A/N: Thank you all for your comments and reviews, it is so awesome hearing from you all. Hope to hear more of your thoughts!**


	7. The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

**Chapter 7: The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend**

"You're sure then?" Lucius asked. He was in the visiting room for his weekly meeting, they were usually largely routine with only progress reports slipping between the two companions, but the information Lucius had just received was a game changer. One of the few perks of Azkaban was that they provided complete and utter privacy in the visiting rooms. Silencing spells on the door ensured that no guards overhead anything and it had been determined in each meeting by a wave of his visitor's wand that there were no listening or recording spells present either. Lucius wasn't sure if the lack of security procedures originated from the idea that when the Dementors had held complete control there had rarely been any prisoners fit enough to even talk their visitors, or if in the past other wealthy but...less law _sensitive_ citizens, such as himself, had ensured such a convenience. Either way the lack of oversight that the Ministry was so famous for had once again proved invaluable to his interests.

"Absolutely," a younger man responded with cool confidence. "Everyone is convinced that Potter is guilty, no one even brought up the possibility that he could be innocent. Merlin, most of them are upset that the Dementors are gone and can't torment him," there was obvious glee in the man's voice at the thought of bringing pain, but Lucius scowled.

"I can assure you that diminished numbers and _gone_ are two very different things."

The difference in temperament was instant, gone was the smirking arrogance and cruel pleasure at the thought of a bitter enemy in agony and instead only concern laced the other man's tone as he said, "I know. I didn't mean to be thoughtless, how are you managing things?"

Lucius took a steadying breath and visibly composed himself. Four years of prison had not completely destroyed a lifetime of breeding, training and innate self-assuredness. He was Lucius Malfoy, and despite his unfortunate current circumstances he had once again turned the situation to his advantage. Even here, imprisoned and supposedly disgraced in the eyes of the Wizarding World, he was still providing his Lord with the key to the war and that is the face that he would keep on things. He might appear weak and broken to the dim witted trainees but Malfoys were down for long.

When he spoke it was cool assurance, "Everything is falling into place on our end. Phase One of our plan is working just as I suggested. The new recruits are adjusting quickly, the Aurors are just as brash and stupid as ever. They hide nothing and while they have become no less violent, with influx of people, our people are able to get away with less damage and yet are learning more than ever. I assume that the Order is under the impression that they have recently become _exceedingly_ successful?" he asked with a glint of humor in his voice.

His companion smirked, eyes glittering with sardonic mirth, "There is a fantastic overabundance of Gryffindors in the Order and they are all quick to assume that they are the masters of the universe. They have been celebrating their little victories for the past month! Even that paranoid psycho Moody hasn't spotted anything amiss yet."

Lucius smiled thinly but was not quite as confident as his more inexperienced companion. Despite his criticism of Gryffindors, the younger man in front of him was known for arrogance and to assume that a any initial success meant that nothing could go amiss. Lucius had once been much the same but after years of subtle manipulation and playing the odds he had learned patience and to never assume that things would fall perfectly into place. Plans always had multiple moving parts and it was important for any good plan to be flexible and to account for the unexpected. Contingencies were the lifeblood of survival.

And of course it was never a smart idea to underestimate Albus Dumbledore. The man was craftier than most gave the doddering old fool credit for and despite his hatred for the man, Lucius was too old at this point not to conceded that the man had not first risen to prominence in the Wizarding World and then stayed influential for over 50 simply because he was powerful, but also because he was exceedingly intelligent and played his cards closely to the chest. Despite the details of their plan in concocting the right evidence and the fact that the skills of an experienced interrogator could convince a witness of nearly anything if given enough time and pressure, Lucius had been certain that Dumbledore would see through their little shame of a trial. The man was too smart to be led astray by damning evidence alone and far too experienced not to notice the problems with the trial even if they had been able to fool the rest of the moronic Order and a number of teenagers. But Dumbledore had made no objection. He had not ensured that Potter had spoken his piece, he had not objected to such a harsh sentence being issued to a mere sixteen year old and he had not once visited Potter after he had been abandoned to the walls of Azkaban.

Harry Potter's greatest defender and ally had been strangely silent and Lucius could not help but wonder what the man's long term plan was, for he was certain that the Headmaster had not simply abandoned the subject of the prophesy so readily. He was almost certain the man was plotting something and Lucius was not a man that enjoyed being taken unawares.

His musings reminded him of his next point, "Our original timetable was to prepare for Phase Two to commence in another two months but given this new information...I suggest we accelerate our time table and allow events to...coincide."

Lucius' visitor raised his brow slightly, "really? You think that will be enough time?"

"Difficult but not impossible, there was always the chance that we would have to accelerate our timetable."

"Does Potter know the plan?"

Lucius smiled thinly, "since the death of his little whore Potter has not been in the right frame of mind to notice much. As we have discussed before, he has always paid close attention to the comings and goings of the other prisoners, myself in particular. He may have heard general whispers but it is unlikely that he has any solid information. But that does not mean that is a good idea for us to allow Potter any extended time with his old friends.

"I told you, none of them trust him anymore. Are you sure it's worth the risk of moving too quickly?" the younger man asked.

"Potter has always maintained the fact that he is innocent. The moment he gets a chance to speak with any of his former friends he will be proclaiming it from the rooftops."

"But..."

"Oh they won't believe him...at first. Potter will be angry and hostile and say over and _over_ again that they betrayed him- and they will think that he is just an angry convict that his trying to manipulate his way out of serving out his sentence. But that will only last so long. Potter has information that he can tell them and make no mistake," Lucius said quickly, when he nearly interrupted again, "he may be angry with the Order, he may very well hate every single one of his former friends...but his true vendetta will always be with the Dark Lord and Potter is smart enough to recognize that. The Dark Lord is directly and indirectly responsible for everything in Potter's train wreck of a life. The man murdered his parents, he set a trap for Potter that resulted in the death of his godfather, he had Potter beaten and arrested and imprisoned which subsequently lost him every single person that he ever cared about. Potter is angry with his former compatriots but he has a burning _hatred_ for the Dark Lord. He will use them to get to the revenge that he wants...and perhaps in his mind that will prove to them that he has always been loyal to Dumbledore and he can then work to get back the friends that he lost. Or perhaps he simply wants to be able to tell them to go fuck themselves after they realize their mistake. At that point it makes little difference to us."

"I've told you before, no one trusts him. Potter can claim whatever the hell he likes, doesn't mean they'll believe him."

Lucius scowled in response to the other's argument but quite against his will he felt a certain admiration for his enemy as he explained, "Potter is the most genuine person that I have ever encountered. Even four years in this desolate hell has not stopped that innate need that he feels to help and protect others. He is...unusual in the fact that he is both single minded in his quest to do what he feels he must, and yet his world is filled with interesting shades of grey. Potter has spent too much time around criminals not to have gained some sympathy for their plight and likewise, he is hardly an advocate for the Ministry and its Auror program.

"Sincerity like that- particularly around sentimental Gryffindors and his former friends will be difficult to ignore indefinitely. They will start to believe him...because despite their claims to the contrary most _want_ to believe that he is innocent and they have just been too angry and short sighted and later too stubborn to see it. They testified against him, they refused to speak with him- for them to even consider the idea that they were wrong is something that goes beyond comprehension and so they have ignored any doubts that they have had until now. But that will change when they are confronted with him once again and are no longer able to ignore what they have done. Potter cannot be allowed to gain the strength of his former allies, we need to keep them divided, just as this plan was always devised to do."

"Indeed," the younger man said drily. "So by advancing the timetable you think you can make it seem as though Potter might be responsible?"

"Possible, but also whatever the Order is planning to use Potter for- something so dire that you are _unable_ to reveal it to me, it must be of grave importance- by readying ourselves for the Final Phase while their attention is diverted elsewhere, they will be unprepared to launch a proper defense."

The companion smiled thinly, finally his double life would be coming to an end. The Dark Lord was readying himself to step out of the shadows at last and he would be able to see Potter destroyed once and for all.

 **May 4** **th** **, 2000**

It took longer than the members of the Order had expected to set their plan into motion. They needed the Minister of Magic himself to sign off on a temporary release for any prisoner- a detail that everyone had known would require quite a bit of convincing, but they had still managed to drastically underestimate the Minister's reluctance. Their official request was denied three times and it had taken nothing less than the impressive negotiating skill of Albus Dumbledore himself to assure the Minister that Harry Potter would be returned within one week- at most. The Minister had expressed his 'sincere reservations in regards to releasing one of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named top Death Eaters', a prisoner, Tyson had confided to them that according to all reports was uncooperative and belligerent even within the confines of the prison. The Minister had asked the very rational question of: 'how can anyone be assured that they can keep the boy under control once he's set out in the public?'

What had tipped the Minister's hand was a sudden increase in attacks by a startling number of new recruits. Until the past few months no one had realized how extensive Voldemort's recruitment had been as it had seemed as though the efforts of the Ministry had kept them largely at bay. The Order had needed to split its attention, with only a few of the older original members and Harry's former friends working on the prison release plan and the rest working on quelling the attacks. The Order had been invaluable over the last several weeks, stopping several key attacks and capturing dozens of newly installed Death Eaters, each of them sent directly to Azkaban under the Enemy of the State laws. Hope for both the Order and the Ministry had been that such extreme sentencing- automatic life sentences- for anyone found with a Dark Mark would be a severe deterrent in younger recruits joining, but it seemed that on that score they had been mistaken. Still the comfort now came from the fact that the so-called 'Dark Lord' was recruiting increasingly poor wizards to fill his ranks, wizards that were caught easily and with surprisingly few causalities.

Despite the Minister's very reluctant agreement to release the prisoner, Dumbledore had been forced to sign extensive paperwork claiming complete responsibility for anything that might occur once Potter was released and had been urged again and again by any official that they had spoken with to reconsider their plan. Dumbledore had agreed to all of these terms with his usual serenity, even when several Order members started to express doubt that it was wise to put so much responsibility on themselves when dealing with a boy that they knew they could not trust. If he escaped, Albus was agreeing that he was responsible, if the boy hurt someone or relayed information back to his master, Albus was also responsible and had even put in writing that he would surrender himself for arrest- an interesting addition to the contract when it was recalled that Aurors had once before tried to take the great wizard into custody only for him to allude them. Now, binding magical contract ensured that Dumbledore would have to adhere to the Ministry's terms or suffer the consequences.

However, for many in the Order, they were not merely concerned about the dire repercussions that would occur if Potter betrayed them once again, they apprehensive (at best) about allowing Harry Potter even a little access into their lives again. This was a boy that they had once cared for. That many in the room would have died for, and not simply for the good of the war but for the boy himself. They had laughed with him, cried with him and worried over his future only to learn that so much about him had been a lie. He had fooled them all so completely that four years later the betrayal still felt fresh.

Finally, approval was received. Then the logistics had to be worked out. How would they approach Potter? How much information would they share with him? They couldn't tell him about the Horcruxes until they could be certain that he wouldn't reveal the information to anyone else and the only way to do that was to get the boy to either agree to an Unbreakable Vow- which seemed unlikely for him to do, or to sign the same contract that the rest of them had signed ensuring their own silence- which again presented the problem of how to get him to agree. They further realized that no one knew what to expect from Potter any longer, would he be violent? Would he even agree to speak with them in the first place? It left a lot of uncertainty to their plans and it was with great trepidation that the final arrangements were made.

In the end, it was Ron and Hermione that were chosen to speak to the prisoner first. It had been decided that since they had once known him best, they might just have the best chance of getting him to agree to their plan. After the two of them had Potter's agreement to help them he would be taken back to Headquarters for their first test.

The trip over in the small, rickety boat was even more terrible than Hermione had been prepared for. It was common knowledge that nearly all of the Dementors had fled the prison and she had therefore been completely unprepared for the permeating feeling of doom that still radiated off of the small island. She was hit by an immense chasm of despair, a wallowing sadness that seemed overwhelming to the senses and the thought that the place had once been worse than this was only cause for further distress.

"Are you alright?" Ron asked quietly as they made their way towards the main entrance. She glanced over and saw him looking at her with quiet concern. They had made the trip in silence, Hermione tense both from haunted memories as well as her apprehension about their future meeting. Ron had been unnaturally still, his face expressionless in a way that she did not ever recall seeing it in their school days.

"I'm fine," she said briskly, "it's just…do you remember our Third Year?" In that moment she realized for the first time that she was speaking to the one person that might really understand what it felt like to be here. To the one other person in the Order, in the entire world, who knew what it felt like to have to come here and ask Harry for help and ask knowing that he wasn't on their side but to still be able to remember a time when the three of them had been so inseparable. And the first time in years Hermione was struck with the realization that she and Ron had lost more than one best friend, they had also lost each other.

Ron nodded tightly and she could see that a muscle was bouncing in his jaw, "you mean Ha-Potter's reaction to Dementors? Yeah I remember." He let out a long breath and when he spoke again it was a kind of forced resolved. "But he should have remembered that before he decided to turn his back on us."

She leaned unconsciously toward Ron, a remnant of when it had been natural for him to comfort her. To awkwardly put his arm around her and sort of pat her shoulder in that gormless, adolescent way that he had had at the time. He did not move to touch her now, but his movement as walked beside her was no longer awkward and uncomfortable. Ron had been training to be Auror for the past year and his confidence had obviously been improved. He was calm and stead but when she spoke again her voice was quiet, nearly a whisper. "I just…I wish more than anything that I could understand _why_. Don't you? Haven't you always wondered what happened to make Harry turn to _Voldemort_ of all people?"

Ron's jaw clenched and his ears turned red in frustration rather than embarrassment, "I wonder every day, Hermione, but it isn't going to do us any good. Potter made his choice, we made ours. We're not visiting him as his friends, we're getting him to help the Order. That's it. If this is all too hard for you, let me know."

Hermione glared hard at him for his condescending tone and he relented slightly, his harsh tone softening and a hint of vulnerability crossed his features as he admitted, "It's hard for me too. I'm not saying I don't understand where you're coming from but we need to remember why we're here. We need to stay focused."

He was so different than the Fifth Year prefect that had not wanted to tell his brothers off for breaking rules, he had hardened over the past couple of years. It struck her like a slap in the face that she barely knew him at all anymore. Steeling herself for the task ahead, Hermione nodded and responded in businesslike fashion, "I understand Ron, and trust me I haven't forgotten everything that Harry has done. Everything that he would have done if he had been able to get away with what happened that day and fully joined the Death Eaters."

Ron nodded just as they were entering the small conference room that was used for visitors.  
"Alright," a burly looking Auror with a rather mean expression said, glancing at the transfer paperwork that the Ministry had sent over. The Auror glared at them suspiciously and Hermione could see that the idea that they had come to take possession of one of his prisoners irritated him. He nodded curtly in their direction, "Avery Higgins, Captain of Guards."

"Pleasure," Hermione greeted, attempting a warm smile. She felt uncharacteristically nervous. After all, she had met with higher officials at the Ministry but the cold look of disapproval from the Auror was unnerving. The man cleared his throat gruffly and announced with distaste, "I have to say I was more than a little surprised at this particular request. It's not too often we get requests for prisoners to help with 'secret missions'."

Hermione shifted slightly and she noticed that Ron looked down as he answered the inquiry. "It's a special circumstance. Shouldn't take longer than a week, at the most, and then Potter will be returned here. That is, of course, if he agrees to help us at all." Ron said this as a formality but in truth no one they had spoken to in the Ministry really doubted that any prisoner wouldn't jump at the opportunity to be released for a few days, no matter what the circumstances. The exception perhaps being Bellatrix Lestrange who was so obsessively in love with her master that the idea of even giving a token betrayal was beyond her.

Surprisingly though the Auror gave a derisive snort. "You don't think that he'll agree?" Hermione asked curiously. The Order had speculated as to what Harry's mental state would be. The exposure to Dementors was greatly reduced now but Hermione more than most people knew Harry's strong aversion to the dark creatures. Would he even be capable of helping them after all this time?

"Let's just say that I've never known Potter to be particularly cooperative with the right side of the law. He made up his mind a long time ago to make my life hell and he stuck to it. Potter does what Potter wants, so I guess it depends on what you offer him." This was said with a grimace that highlighted the harsh lines on the man's face.

Hermione remembered their Fifth Year when Harry had stubbornly- and completely alone- defied Umbridge again and again. She wished that he had taken that strength and used it against the right people.

"How is the prisoner, mentally speaking? Have any deficiencies been reported?" Ron asked in what could only be considered a detached tone to someone that didn't know him. His tone was brisk, his face professional and calm just as any aspiring Auror might look when inquiring about a prisoner but the fingers on his left hand tapped lightly against side and she knew him well enough to know the tension that belied.

In spite of everything Hermione knew that the idea of Harry truly suffering hurt Ron. He had been so angry when he had learned of Harry's defection to the Death Eaters, swearing up and down that he would hate him forever. In their Sixth Year and even into their Seventh if anyone had even mentioned Harry's name Ron had ranted and defamed his former friend. He had turned angry and destructive- racking up multiple detentions and allowing his grades to suffer which had only caused more fights between the two of them because Hermione had barely emerged from the library when she had becoming increasingly obsessed with compensating for the failure of not seeing what had been right in front of her. It had taken time for both of them cope with the loss of their friend but their different methods had pushed them further and further apart.

However, Hermione had always felt that beneath Ron's anger there had mostly been pain. And beneath the pain there had even been worry and concern for the boy that Harry could have been. Concern that he had either been too ashamed to admitted to having, or too immature to process. Two years out of school and Hermione suspected that Ron had matured enough to let the concern move closer to the forefront of his mind. It was more than she could have said for a lot of the other Order members.

The Auror frowned, "undetermined." The man paused, there was a calculating look in the man's eyes that didn't seem as if it belonged. Hermione had the immediate impression that the Auror in front of her was not generally known for his particularly brilliant intellect but he seemed to be thinking quickly as to how much he should say that at the moment.

He cleared his throat and said confidentially, "Off the record my personal opinion is that Potter is bat-shit insane. Under the new guidelines all prisoners have been re-interrogated. Some have been here for years trying to claim they were innocent but all that changed once new protocol came through. Every single prisoner in here has confessed and most have been pled mercy…er shown remorse, you know," he clarified. "With the sole exception being Potter."

Ron and Hermione exchanged surprised looks at that. "Wh…what could that mean?" Hermione asked cautiously. It struck as her strange that after all this time Harry would still claim to be innocent without any reason. He had already been convicted at trial, any reason to lie was over now. The evidence that they uncovered during the Ministry's first investigation- the evidence from Harry's interrogation before the trial had already been presented and though it had lacked an actual confession the Aurors had explained how everything fit together.

"That he's stubborn," Higgins grunted. "And that he refuses to submit to authority. Potter has more violations against him than any prisoner here. I hope you lot know what you're asking for because this one's a real piece of work."

"But if he keeps making the same claims over and over again, couldn't there be something everyone is missing?" Hermione asked, she had worked with legal department of the Ministry for almost two years and she had grown accustomed to wanting to know the whole story. Truth be told that was the aspect of the job that had attracted her from the beginning, she had never been able to leave a puzzle alone.

"He doesn't _claim_ anything," Higgins argued, "he mostly refuses to speak unless it's an insult or a curse. And anything that he does say, is later proven to be a lie. I'm telling you as a favor, don't trust what Potter has to say. I've been in charge here a long time and the only thing I can say that has changed with time is he's a much better liar now than he ever was in the beginning." Ron was nodding along with this assessment from what was effectively his superior but Hermione could not help but notice that although Higgins seemed to be saying all of this with seeming reluctance, he was also being quite careful to convey the right message. It was clear that Higgins didn't like Harry and was trying very hard indeed for them to share that opinion.

"Why do you say undetermined then?" she asked shrewdly.

"I meant the official report," Higgins snapped his eyes lighting with anger. He took a breath and seemed to pull himself together before elaborating, "Our Healer recently died. She always had too good of an opinion of that kid if you ask me. Thought that he wasn't all bad I guess. Her reports always claimed that Potter was 'mentally resilient' but our new Healer, Compter his name is, he feels that Potter been sliding into an…" the man glanced down at the file in front of him and read out, "'a possibly irrevocable depression'. Potter held out longer than most but Azkaban eventually breaks them all."

Hermione felt sick to her stomach to hear the absolute glee with which the man spoke. He _wanted_ these prisoners to suffer- and he ensured that their stay was every bit as awful as people imagined.

"Is it common for prisoners to see the Healer so often?" Ron asked in apparent surprise. His tone took Hermione aback, that was until her logic caught up with herself. Even after all these years, the differences between the muggle and wizarding worlds were at time startling to her. The Wizarding World had virtually no laws about basic health care, or even allowance for what muggles would have deemed 'human rights'. It was a sad fact that most Wizards never even considered mental health an issue at all. When looked at properly it was actually amazing that Azkaban even had a Healer on duty.

"New regs from the Minister," the Auror grumbled this time less enthusiastically then when he been speaking about the new interrogation protocols. "Used to be that the only time a prisoner saw a Healer was when they were dying, but a couple of years back the Ministry mandated regular appointments for the prisoners. Waste of damn time in my opinion. Most of 'em have been crazy for years, ain't nothing gunna change that. Though I shouldn't complain. This Minister looks out for us better than most. Great man that Ivan Tyson."

"I think he's done a really excellent job of handling things with the war," Hermione agreed while Ron nodded next to her. After Fudge, Hermione had lost a lot of respect for the Wizarding government but just into her Sixth Year, Tyson had been elected- and with him so many sweeping changes that the Ministry was almost unrecognizable. It was strict and at times even harsh with the laws but the people were safe as it was possible for them to be. Higgins' face brightened slightly at the compliment to the esteemed Minister.

"I see you're training to be an Auror yourself," the man said with a nod at Ron's gold-lined robes that signified first year recruits. Ron nodded with a proud smile. At 20 years old he was one of the younger recruits to make it into training, most were a couple years older. "Then you should be happy with the new training regime that the Minister green-lighted. Fudge dragged his heels on it for years but the Third Years need the field experience. You'll see what I mean in a couple of years," the man shot him what appeared to be a failed attempt at a wink but Hermione didn't like the kind of cruel glint in the man's eyes and she felt Ron stiffen slightly as well, obviously noting the man's demeanor too.

Ron and Hermione nodded politely but she could see that Ron hadn't been fully appraised of the so-called 'training program' either. The Ministry had been keeping a lot of their plans secret in recent years and despite the fact that Ron was currently in the Auror program himself, he obviously had not reached this level of confidence yet.

"Excuse me a moment, I'll be back with the prisoner."

Hermione and Ron sat in anxious silence. She remembered when it had once been so easy to talk to Ron. They would spend hours talking, and that was after spending a whole day in classes together. Now though it had been months since she had had a proper conversation with him and yet she found that she had nothing to say.

The door opened and two Aurors walked in this time, with Harry held securely in the middle of the two. Hermione had to bite back a gasp at his appearance. If she had met him on the street she didn't think she would have recognized the boy she had spent five years spending every day possible with. He was rail thin, his face hollow and…old. His skin had a kind of greyish tinge to it that make him even sicklier. He had a few days of stubble on his chin, a difference from the boy Harry she had known, four years ago he had not yet possessed the capability of such an achievement. His once vibrant green eyes were cold and dead.

He showed absolutely no surprise at seeing the two of them after so much time- his expression was blank, there was barely a hint of acknowledgement in his eyes at all. Not as though he didn't recognize them, worse it was as if he could easily dismiss them. His face was pale and Hermione could see dark circles that proved that sleep had been rare for him. It occurred to her after a moment that although he did have stubble he did not have the long facial hair that would have existed in the older days of Azkaban, proving once again that the prisoners were being seen to more than they were in the days before Tyson. However, he was skinny, ribs were visible under his uniform robes making him look ill and gaunt. He was barely taller than he had been when she had last seen him- at the age of 15. It appeared that Azkaban had not been the healthiest of environments for him to come of age in.

The Aurors dragged him in even though Harry was not protesting. Nor did he react at all when they each grabbed an arm and secured him to the chair that sat on the opposite side of the table from them.

"We'll be right outside, if he gives you any trouble at all don't hesitate to call us. We'll be sure to punish him properly for any disrespect, especially towards a lady," the Auror promised with a wink that came across as more of a leer.

This appeared to be the typical manner in which the Aurors addressed prisoners for no one in the room reacted to this threat at all. In fact, Harry was shockingly emotionless. She remembered a time when Harry had been fueled by passionate emotions, something that had filled her with pride at the time but in retrospect seemed to foreshadow the troubles he would find himself in. Nevertheless, she wasn't sure if she should be grateful that his time in prison had stifled such violent impulses- or sad to see such passion die.

The Aurors left quickly and for the first time in nearly four years it was just the three of them. There was an awkward moment- each of them sizing the other up, wondering who would speak first.

"Ron," Harry spoke and his voice was almost unrecognizable. It was hoarse. Strained and tired as though he was both unused to talking and in a great deal of pain. In spite of everything, Hermione felt her heart constrict at the sound, she was filled with sadness for him, longing for her former-friend. "you decided to become an Auror…congratulations on being accepted into the program."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ron asked defensively, all former calm and professionalism gone once he was face to face with his former friend.

Harry quirked one of his eyebrows and answered dryly. "It's been awhile since I've done the whole conversation thing, and small talk has never been my strong suit, but if memory serves correctly, you congratulate someone when they've accomplished something to be proud of. Unless you're not proud of it?" It was hard to say if the question was challenge or taunt but there was a strange emotion on Harry's face that Hermione didn't like.

Ron flushed at his former best friend and Hermione was left wondering exactly how this meeting was going to go.

"How did you know that I was in the Auror program?" Ron asked, more curious this time than defensive.

Harry nodded at Ron's robes, "First year right? I can see the robes. I've spent a lot of time around Aurors in the last few years. I guess the two of us will be seeing a lot of each other soon enough."

"What do you mean by that?" Ron asked suspiciously.

Harry gave a ghost of a smile, unlike in the past it didn't light up his face, instead it was dark. Full of hidden secrets. "I guess they don't advertise the new Third Year training regime. Don't worry about it, I guess you'll find out soon enough. Who knows? Maybe you'll find it as fun as the rest of them."

There was another moment of awkward silence. Hermione knew that Ron was put off by Harry essentially telling him that he knew more about the training required to be an Auror than he did. She knew that Aurors, usually lower ranked Aurors, almost always did at least a brief rotation in Azkaban nowadays. Harry would have talked to quite a few of them. They probably shared with him some of the new methods that the Ministry had been employing to train them better. Hermione was about to get to the point of their visit when Harry spoke up again.

"You shouldn't have come here. No one should come here voluntarily and anything the two of you had to say to me is about four years too late."

"Really wasn't our idea mate, we weren't thrilled about having to see you," Ron answered roughly.

Harry nodded at this statement, seemingly taking the statement in stride rather than the rebuke that it was. "Wasn't my idea either."

"Well at least neither one of us is here because we killed someone."

"Ron!" Hermione yelped, shocked. She couldn't believe that Ron would lose control when he knew how much they needed Harry to help them- whether they wanted it or not. But it was if a dam had burst in Ron and all that he had ever wanted to say came tumbling out of him. His face was flushed and he was breathing harshly through his nose.

Harry, however, barely reacted to this statement at all. His eyes, which were already dark and depressed, seemed to dim further still and he looked immensely tired. "So now that I know that neither of you are here to reminisce about the good old days, why are you here?"

"We can get you out of here," Hermione began enticingly. It had been agreed that they would lead off with what Harry was getting out the deal as a means of making him more likely to agree.

Harry didn't say anything to this, his face was still and expressionless but Hermione knew that he was thinking over what she had just said. "Personally I would have gone for a more subtle plan to break me out of here. I wouldn't underestimate those Aurors- they can be nasty when they want to be, which is most of the time. No offense of course," he said with a slight smirk in Ron's direction in reference to the slight on his intended profession.

"We're not breaking you out, you git, we've got the Minister to agree to a furlough," Ron responded tensely, his muscles were still tightly coiled but he had calmed down from his initial rage and Hermione could see that the red-head was trying to better impression than he had initially.

"Tyson agreed to this?" Harry asked with surprise mixed with distinct dislike.

"How do you know anything about Ivan Tyson?" Hermione asked. She knew that information given to the inmates of Azkaban was extremely limited and she hadn't expected Harry to know anything at all about their new Minister, especially not enough to already dislike him.

"I know some of his policies," Harry answered shortly. "What was it you wanted me to do?"

Hermione bit down on a smirk, people often underestimated Harry when it came to his perception. They thought that he was naïve- or worse, downright gullible. But Harry had always paid attention to people around him and he was quick to know when someone was trying to take advantage of him. She knew that none of their other former classmates would have made that connection as quickly.

"We need someone that can speak parseltongue to question a witness about an upcoming attack, a snake," Hermione said coolly, sticking to their plan of testing Harry before revealing the bigger plans.

Harry leaned back in his chair and gave them a long, considering look, "what is it that you really want?"

"We just told you," Ron said quickly. Too quickly to Hermione's sharp ears and she tried not wince outwardly at his obvious guilt.

Harry's eyebrows rose and for the first time a familiar look crossed his face, she recognized it well from when they were in school, she had just never seen it directed at them before. It was the look Harry gave to people keeping things from him, a look that clearly showed that he had caught them out. "And I don't buy it. The only snake that Voldemort completely confides in is Nagini and I highly doubt you've managed to capture her."

"Hate to think that we got one step up on your precious master, is that it?" Ron taunted.

Harry ignored this and spoke coolly and with incredible calm kept speaking. "As far as I know that slimy little serpent never leaves his side so if you got close enough to her, I doubt you would be worried about capturing a snake to question- you would be killing Voldemort. Which means it's not Nagini, and Voldemort's not a big sharer when it comes to information, which bring me back to my question. What do you really want?"

"Oh that's right you would know all about him right? Do you miss bowing down and kissing his robes just for a scrape of information?" Ron's cheeks were flushed with color and his mouth was twisted in a hateful grimace.

"He is _not_ my master," Harry suddenly growled. His eyes flashed for a moment and there was spark of the former Harry in them. Hermione wished she could believe him. Instead it was terrifying to her that Harry could lie so well to their faces. She could almost believe him, which meant that anything that he told her in the future could never be taken as the truth. She needed to tell herself this, needed to get used to this new reality

Harry had grown impatient. "Listen, you came here for a reason, either tell me what it is or don't but don't waste your time here playing games."

Ron and Hermione exchanged a glance, obviously they couldn't tell him the truth but they would have to tell him a bit more if they expected to get him to go along with their plans.

"It's a runespoor," Hermione began with as much earnestness as she could muster. "Voldemort sent a bunch of them on a raid last month and the casualties…they were high. They were also able to get in without detection until it was too late and no one was able to figure out how it was done. We need to know what he's planning next and this is our only option."

"Do you really think that we would be talking to you unless we absolutely had to?" Ron added rudely.

Harry was still for a moment, his tired, lined face unreadable before he muttered, "doesn't matter," under his breath.

"Sorry?" Ron asked.

"Nothing," Harry muttered, seemingly talking to himself.

"Oh no, don't back out now, what 'doesn't matter'?" Ron asked aggressively, taking years of frustration at Harry out on this single comment.

"That you're lying," Harry explained simply.

"We're not lying," Ron insisted, his ears coloring scarlet under pressure just as they had done when they were kids. Hermione saw Harry's eyes flick up to see the incriminating red and a small smile, rather unwillingly she thought, graced his lips.

"Give me a little credit guys. You can't tell me that one runespoor is your only source of information, or that Dumbledore doesn't have another way of communicating with one if he needed to. I remember him speaking Mermish pretty fluently after the Second Task- I'm sure he has ways of getting around parseltongue."

Ron and Hermione exchanged exasperated glances, and to think that they had been worried that Harry would be too addled to be any help to them. Harry appeared sharper than ever in her opinion, ten minutes in and they had already ruined the entire assignment. There was no way that Harry would believe any story that they told him now.

"So…you don't care why we're here?" Ron asked carefully.

Harry considered them both carefully. Hermione noticed that he had a way of doing that now. She wasn't sure if it was caution or if thinking actually took him longer to do but her formerly quick to action friend was no more. Instead he had turned into someone older. Cynical and more jaded.

"Did the Minister send you or Dumbledore?"

"Why does that matter?" Hermione asked startled that who sent them would matter more to him than what they were asking him to do.

Harry's face hardened for the first time during the interview and for a moment Hermione could see the glimpse of the man that had murdered an innocent woman simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What she had taken for stern before now seemed to be little more than indifference- now he was angry.

"I don't trust the Minister."

"But you trust Dumbledore?" Ron asked, for the first time sounding curious rather than angry or defensive and Hermione knew why. Four years ago Harry would have thought that Dumbledore would have trusted him beyond reproach, just as the man had always done in the past, he would have counted on the man to defend him even with the mounting evidence, but he had been wrong. Dumbledore could not make excuses for Harry, not when he had done the literally unforgivable.

"No," Harry answered firmly. "I don't but I also know what to expect from him. All things considered, I always knew that it was only a matter of time before he would need me for something."

"What the hell is that supposed to me?" Ron asked clearly bewildered and this time Hermione could not fault his exclamation because she felt much the same.

Harry smirked at them and it was once again a reminder that this was not the same person that she had once known. It was also abundantly clear that while Azkaban was clearly a poor environment to spend the last of your formative years, Harry had in fact grown into a man. There was no innocence in his look, no expression that showed that he felt overwhelmed or confused- instead there was only cold calculation. "Let me guess...Dumbledore never cared to inform you about his overarching plans? Never shared the finer points of why he would need the er...what was the term the Daily Prophet used? The Chosen One."

Hermione bristled at his tone, which was deliberately mocking at this point. Harry knew that her greatest weakness was not knowing information that she craved... or perceiving failure in herself, and this was his way of tempting her to distrust the others. Dumbledore had shared everything with the Order. Shared with them secrets that no one else could possible know, this was only a tactic to make them distrust first their leader and then one another, and she was not about to let Harry get a foothold in those seeds of distrust. "We've told you everything that you need to know for the moment, anything else you want to know will have to come after we're at Headquarters."

Harry's brow scrunched momentarily at her words but he said nothing for a moment. Finally he said, with an aggrieved sigh,"I don't trust Dumbledore but he beats staying in Azkaban for any more time than I have to."

"But Tyson doesn't?" Ron asked slowly, as though to clarify Harry's meaning.

"Anything Tyson has planned for me can't be good," he answered cryptically.

Hermione frowned, "he's done a lot of good, Harry. Without him Voldemort would have taken over by now. He's a great leader."

Ron was not interested in reasoning with Harry though. "Don't you get it Hermione?" He exclaimed, gesturing lividly at Harry, " **He** wants Voldemort to take over! That's why he's here!"

"If I wanted that, would I be interested in helping Dumbledore?" Harry asked sounding more tired than angry at Ron's animosity. "I don't trust the Minister because I don't think he's interested in doing the right thing, just the easiest thing to get himself more power."

"You don't even know everything that he's done!" Hermione protested in frustration.

"Neither do you, Hermione," Harry said and there was a look of disappointment on his face that gave her pause for a moment. It was almost…pitying. And that was when Hermione saw red.

"I know that the Minister has been doing everything in his power to stop _Voldemort_! I know that he's had to make some hard choices but in the end it's kept us all safe for the past three years! Don't sit there after all this time and talk about things that you don't even understand, Harry. You gave up! You chose to walk away from all the people that could have cared about you. You should have come to us for help! We would have been your _family_ Harry- but instead you chose Voldemort. And now you have gall to sit there and talk about _trust_? If you _**must**_ know, it _was_ Dumbledore that sent us but I wouldn't sit there thinking you're so much better than a man that has dedicated his life to protecting people!"

Harry sat still throughout her tirade. She had expected him to lash out. To tell her that they were foolish and that he had made the right choice by picking the winning side. She had seen the same thing before with other Death Eaters, she had even expected for him to try once again to claim that he was innocent. For him to swear to them once again that he would never join his own parents' murderer.

But Harry said nothing. He closed his eyes briefly and Hermione could see the lines on his face. The fact that he had probably not had a proper night's sleep in years. He looked broken. Something that she knew she should feel glad about after everything that he had done but instead she only felt incredibly sad for the person that Harry could have been.

"I'll do it." He said quietly.

"You- you will?" Ron asked in disbelief.

"We're not getting you out of Azkaban permanently," Hermione clarified.

"Hermione," Ron growled in exasperation and Harry gave a weak chuckle. For a split second Hermione felt as though the three of them were back at Hogwarts, the two of them teasing her over her study timetables after she told them that they would have plenty of time for their OWLS as long as they started studying in February. Preferably February of Third Year.

"I know," Harry said simply. "Doesn't matter, it's not like I have a busy social calendar or anything. What else am I doing?" he asked sardonically but there was strange note in his voice that Hermione didn't like. "But I'm agreeing to only help Dumbledore and the Order, not Tyson and if any information even gets passed back to the Ministry about what we're doing I strike."

"Why not?" Ron asked clearly confused about the rash reasoning.

Harry gave them a hard look for a moment before he spoke. "You don't get to ask me that. You had your chance to ask all the questions of me you wanted four years ago or really any time after that, my schedule's been wide open. No one wanted to hear anything from me then, so you don't get to ask now. I do find it interesting that the two of _you_ are going to lecture _me_ on trust and being a good person when you _never_ trusted me, but it comes to the same thing. You're not here because we're friends. I'll help you because I can and any time out of Azkaban is better than being stuck in here but this isn't like before. We're not friends so don't think that you can ask my reasoning."

Hermione sighed, no things weren't like before. She and Ron looked to another and then agreed silently. It was time to start the paperwork. Harry Potter was coming to Grimmauld Place.

 **A/N: Thank you all for your reviews and comments.**

 **One thing I wanted to address: I have gotten quite a lot of reviews claiming that the Order is 'beyond redemption' and honestly I'm not sure why so many people are so quick to condemn people without any chance at all. This is a matter of opinion I suppose but I consider very few people in life completely 'beyond redemption'. That's not to say that people don't have to pay for their mistakes but this is very much a story in which it is very important to keep your eyes on the true villains.**

 **Also I know for some reason a lot people seemed to think that Harry would refuse to help the Order but honestly when his other option is getting cursed and beaten by guards, I can't see many people refusing an offer to get out of prison- no matter who they had deal with for the time being. Hence the title- the Enemy of My Enemy, which is a very old historical saying of war if anyone is unfamiliar.**


	8. Old Friends Know Us Best

**Chapter 8: Old Friends Know Us Best**

The strangest part of it all was that in some ways Ron knew that Harry was _still_ his best friend. Harry had been the first real friend that he had ever had and even during Fourth Year when he had so childishly refused to speak to him for weeks, there had never been another friend that could take his place. It had not been until much later that Ron had fully realized that no matter how angry he had thought that he had been at the time, no matter how jealous he had been, there had never been a true moment when he had thought that their friendship was actually over. He had always _expected_ to make up with Harry. He was the only person that Ron had ever completely confided in. The only person that knew how to make him feel better when his self-esteem had all but disappeared. Even with 5 brothers, 3 other dormmates, countless other friends that he had met at Hogwarts, there had never been anyone else to take that place in his life and there was a hole where Harry had once stood in his heart that he knew would never be filled.

And that hole had only grown wider over time, even though Ron had barely noticed. For the first several months after Harry's conviction he had been largely on self-destruct. He had felt angry at the world. Racking up detentions in his classes for being insubordinate, for fighting with his classmates, for failing to turn in his work. His parents had received multiple owls from McGonagall and he himself had wound up in her office more often than the twins had managed if you were talking proportional time.

He and Hermione had fought viciously...and then stopped. He was never sure when they had decided to just stop being friends but he was sure that it was a strangely mutual decision. No conversation had been needed, neither one of them had banished the other, and yet somehow the habit of hanging around each other had just...stopped.

He had eventually pulled himself together. If Harry was going to throw away everything that the three of them had worked towards, he was going to be the one to pick up those pieces. He would be an Auror- and a damn good one if he had anything to say about it. It was hard- without Harry's natural skills to help teach them and without Hermione's brains to lead them all in the right direction of what to do. Ron had always been well aware that he had been the weakest link in their little friendship but now he was suddenly adrift. All alone with no one that helped him or really understood him.

There had never been friends to take Harry and Hermione's place and while, when he had gotten older, there had been a series of one night stands and loose acquaintances when it came to women, there had never been a serious love interest to keep his attention either. Instead the only thing that Ron had to fill his time was his studies towards the Auror Academy and then the Academy itself. If Ron had ever been one to notice irony, he would have realized how strange it was that it was only after he had stopped hanging around Hermione that he had had no reason to stay away from the library. His work quickly became his life.

It became normal for him to reach the end of the day and realize that he had only spoken with a handful of people and usually briefly at best. At the Academy there would be evenings in which his classmates invited him out for drinks as the local pub, and sometimes he even went, determined to make new friends, but usually he would stand on the outer rim of the group, feeling the need to fake a laugh when it seemed appropriate and wait until it was a polite hour to beg off claiming tiredness. He wasn't unfriendly and most days he didn't consider himself to be... alone, but slowly his life had become sadly routine and for the first time in years Ron was thrown back into the memories of what it had been like to have two friends that he would have done literally anything for.

When Ron had arrived at the Ministry for questioning that summer's day now nearly four years previous, he had been so convinced that there had to have been a mistake. Harry was the _last_ person in the world to willingly join Lord Voldemort. Harry was the boy who had courageously saved his sister. The boy who had allowed Pettigrew to live even after finding out what he had done to Harry's parents. He was the boy that had gone after Voldemort as a mere eleven year old and had passionately, and completely unintentionally, convinced both himself and Hermione to go as well. The Ministry had to be barking mad to believe for a minute that Harry would ever become a Death Eater. That he would ever hurt anyone never mind actually killing someone.

Ron had been rude and defiant at the start of his interview. He had told them point blank that they had the wrong person and that they should all stop believing everything that they had read in the blasted newspapers about Harry and actually get to know him- because Ron did. Ron _knew_ Harry, and he was absolutely certain that the Ministry was wrong about him. Except they weren't. The Aurors had gone over everything, point by vicious point and as the evidence mounted Ron's resolve had crumbled bit by bit.

" _We understand that this is hard for you to accept son, that boy lied to you for a long time."_

" _Harry never lied to me! He wouldn't do that."_

" _Are you saying that you've never known Harry to lie to anyone? You've never seen him lie to others?"_

" _No..." Ron faltered, flushing slightly. He_ had _seen Harry lie. It wasn't very often, in fact most of the time Ron felt that Harry was uncommonly honest even when it got him into trouble. So honest that most people had the impression that he was either a bad liar or just unable to lie, but again Ron knew differently. He remembered Harry telling McGonagall straight-faced that they were off to visit Hermione when they had been caught out of bounds. He remembered Harry lying to Snape about the missing potions ingredients. Both times two teachers that were infamous for detecting lies were unable to catch him. When Harry wanted to, he could lie very well._

" _He never told you about the abuse that he suffered at the hands of his relatives," the Auror continued._

" _That wasn't his fault," Ron muttered sullenly. He hadn't even believed that Harry had been beaten as badly as he had until the Aurors had shown him pictures. They had made him sick to his stomach but he still couldn't believe that the Aurors would actually use the fact that his friend had been beaten and abused as evidence against him._

" _No it wasn't," a second, slightly friendlier, Auror, this one shorter, said. "What those monsters did to that boy is terrible. Honestly, as his friend we can understand why you think that what happened to him excuses what he did. People are allowed to act in self-defense."_

" _Yeah-"_

" _But self-defense is getting someone to stop what they are doing and getting away to get help," the first Auror picked up. "Your friend didn't do that, did he? He never told anyone what was happening in that house. Why do you think that is?"_

" _Harry never liked the Dursleys, he told us that himself."_

" _But he didn't tell you all of it, did he?"_

" _He was probably embarrassed..."_

" _Does Harry strike you as the type of person to be afraid of standing up for himself?" Auror one asked._

" _If you were in his place, wouldn't you want to get back at people that kept you in a cupboard. That beat you. Starved you?" the second Auror pressed._

 _And Ron couldn't say no._

" _But_ you _wouldn't use Unforgivable Curses."_

" _You wouldn't kill an innocent woman just because she witnessed what you were doing."_

 _Ron shook his head, hating the fact that he couldn't say no to anything that they were saying to him. "But Harry...he would_ never _join You-Know-Who...he hated him more than anyone!"_

" _Even if this was his only chance at getting out from his abusive relatives?"_

" _Even if the Dark Lord promised him things that Dumbledore and the Order couldn't?"_

" _We talked to some of your other friends Ron, they said that Harry was frustrated and upset with the Order all year. They treated him like a kid, didn't they? And Harry hated that."_

 _Ron said nothing but he knew what they said was right._

" _They also said that Harry has a temper and that he was even thrown off the Quidditch team for aggressive fighting."_

" _Malfoy provoked him," Ron defended._

" _Hmm." The shorter Auror answered leadingly._

" _Still, Harry doesn't seem like the type to allow others to take care of problems. He's probably extremely self-sufficient and independent. He would have had to be from a young age with those relatives. In a lot of ways, Harry can seem very impressive, doesn't he? He's calm and collected in dangerous situations. He's a leader. If the Dark Lord offered Harry what the Order couldn't...don't you think he would find that tempting?"_

 _He had been so convinced that these people, these strangers couldn't know his friend but...everything that they said described Harry perfectly. Harry was independent. Harry_ did _hate it when the Order kept things from him and treated them all like little kids._

 _Still there was an inch of defiance, of stubborn loyalty. "What about veritaserum? Use that and Harry will tell you himself that he would never take the Dark Mark!"_

 _The Auror Two smiled at him sympathetically, "your friend Miss Granger brought up the same point, the two of you are really quite loyal to him. We interview a lot of people, Mr. Weasley and I will say it's not often that someone is ardent in their defense of another person. Very few people are so confident that even their closet friends couldn't do what they were accused of doing, because let me tell Mr. Weasley I've worked here a long time and one thing that I've learned is that people are capable of anything. Our investigations are very thorough, and we wouldn't have bought you here to talk about your friend unless we were sure about him. It's a shame the same can't be said about how he feels about you."_

 _Ron felt himself flush at what they told him earlier, that not only had Harry killed the Dursleys but he had working with the Death Eaters all along. That he had been planning on turning over him and the others the night of the Department of Mysteries. Ron had denied it. He had told them how Harry had fought the Death Eaters, how he had been the last person still dueling. The Aurors had claimed that he had been toying with them- otherwise why hadn't Harry gone down fighting as well. Wouldn't the Death Eaters have been targeting him above anyone else?_

 _The man spoke up, "though veritaserum is inadmissible in court, we do use it during interrogations to get information that we need. Potter confessed to having cast an Unforgivable curse- a Cruciatus to be exact."_

 _Ron blinked, fully stunned for the first time. That was when scales had tipped for Ron and any other protest he had offered that day had been weak at best._

Harry had betrayed them.

Harry had turned this back on everything that he had once stood for and decided that revenge on the muggles that had abused him was more important to him than fighting with the Order against the man that had made him go to the Dursleys in the first place. He knew that Hermione felt that a part of them should pity Harry. Pity someone whose relatives had treated him so horribly that he had actually sided with his own parent's _murderer_ in order to get even with them. Ron's sympathy had always been limited.

He had been too angry at Harry's choices, at the fact that he had not only committed terrible crimes but had abandoned their friendship as well, to feel pity. Now, however, a bit of pity had uncomfortably wormed its way into his heart.

Harry hadn't spoken a word since they had left Azkaban.

After Harry had surprised them both by agreeing to help them with almost no persuasion needed at , he had lapsed into a strangely obedient silence, nothing like the friend that he remembered from Hogwarts. Harry never been overly chatty. He had always been content to listen more than contribute, but he had never been...silent. The thin man now followed each of their orders without hesitation, his swift movements his only sign of any acknowledgement at all as they proceeded to properly process him before he could be officially released.

First they had to meet with Captain Higgins and all of them had had to sign several papers detailing the conditions of release. Higgins had explained all the rules and restrictions that Potter was expected to follow while under custody of the Order. Harry had nodded a few times when prompted but made no comment and asked no questions.

Next they had given him a set of borrowed robes and instructed him to change, leading him to a small bathroom with a shower and a magical razor that would clear up the rest of his scraggly beard before being released out into the world. Hermione had remarked that she had never seen a razor quite like it, not even in the Wizarding World where enchanted razors were quite popular this one looked rather unique and the guard helped them by explaining that it was a special issue that the former Healer had ordered after noting that without cutting their hair or shaving at least somewhat regularly the hygiene, and consequently the health, of the prisoners suffered. The former Healer had instituted a new regime in which prisoners were groomed about once a month or so. The razors were charmed to both cut and shave hair to the users' oral specifications, but they were unable to be used for self-harm or to commit suicide. Ron had noticed that Hermione had paled slightly at that realization. When Potter had re-emerged from the small closet, Ron had been slightly surprised to note he had actually cut his hair a bit. The black mop was still wild but it was now shorter and with it clean and slightly more stylish, he appeared a bit closer to his actual age.

It was then that they had placed him in magical restraints.

These were specially issued by the Ministry and Ron had heard that they could be quite painful when initially put on. Ostensibly they were very similar to muggle handcuffs (at least according to Hermione) and consisted of two metal cuffs bound together with a short width of chain. The difference was that these cuffs were linked to a person's magical core and blocked their ability to do magic. This was something that went against the very nature of a person's magic and could cause the wizard in question a great deal of discomfort as they were essentially cut off from a part of themselves. Some people claimed that the more magic a person had the more painful the cuffs were and Ron wondered how Harry would feel with them. If there was one thing that he was quite sure of, it was the fact that Harry was a powerful wizard. His reaction surprised Ron by how muted it was, Harry winced and closed his eyes briefly as the cuffs went gone on but he hadn't protested or complained.

At first Ron had thought that Harry's silence was an act of defiance. Proof of what he had told them in the visiting room- that the three of them were no longer friends and he would not be treating them like they were. Harry's actions had been calm, nearly robotic in following directions but he had not so much as glanced at another person.

However, Ron's assessment of the situation changed once they had officially started on their way back to Headquarters. The trip to Headquarters was long due to the fact that the use of the restraints made any form of magical transportation impossible. This meant driving several hours back to London with Ron and Hermione making awkward, stilted conversation with one another and Harry sitting silently the whole time, idly looking out of the backseat window of the borrowed Ministry car that Hermione was driving. He sat calmly enough and for the first couple of hours Ron actually thought that he should feel things were going much smoother than he had anticipated. He had not known what to expect from his former best friend.

He had thought Harry would be angry and aggressive or possibly even cold and aloof. Either way he had expected Harry to feel like a stranger to him now, the fact that he still felt like the old Harry that would sit quietly by the fire in the Common Room while he and Hermione bickered about chess was disconcerting and strange. Even he had first seen Harry and he started their conversation so unexpectedly it had still felt so familiar and Ron and lashed out with a return of that teenage anger. He felt embarrassed about his loss of composure now- he had lectured Hermione about keeping her emotions under control and he had proven to be no better. But he had been determined to remain professional for the rest Harry's furlough.

Not that Harry seemed to notice. Because Ron had noticed that far from simply sitting quietly in the backseat and avoiding all conversation, Harry had a glazed look in his eyes that made Ron wonder whether the prisoner was entirely aware of everything that was happening around him. He had not moved in the last three hours, not even to shift positions slightly and his eyes seemed to rarely blink. Ron caught sight of him in one of the mirrors a few times and he seemed unable to help himself from continuing to glance back every few minutes to see if there had been any change.

Azkaban had changed Harry, Ron knew that much for sure. He was quiet, withdrawn and almost certainly deeply depressed. He recalled hearing about the report that had read 'possibly irrevocably depressed' and Ron wondered how deeply those changes went. Were there any traces of the old Harry still there?

It was overcast. A typical British day but streaks of light darted in and out of clouds and they seemed to have temporarily memorized Harry like a cat with a piece of string. At long last they arrived in front of Grimmauld Place though Harry barely reacted. Ron cleared his throat loudly. "Alright we're here!"

Harry continued to gaze out of his window, his mind, seemingly, much further away.

"Harry?" Hermione asked loudly.

There was a slow blink and Harry turned with a look of mild confusion before coming back to himself more fully.

"Sorry," he said quietly in that hoarse voice that sounded painful to Ron's ears. "Where are we?"

Hermione shot Ron a worried look before turning to Harry with a look that one might give to someone mentally handicapped. Her voice was low and deliberate. "Harry, you've been here before. We're at headquarters."

Harry glanced at the deserted street with a thoughtful expression. Ron knew that Azkaban could affect a person's memory but he had never seen the effect firsthand before. It was a chilling effect and at once Ron could see that much of their first meeting had been an act for Harry, one- Ron was forced to admit- the other man had pulled off quite well. He had taken Harry as a strong, defiant opponent that was prepared to stand his ground, and while that might have been the others true intentions it was clear that severe illness, not all just physical, was holding him back from being as strong as he had first wanted to appear.

"Sirius' house," Harr finally whispered. "I remember."

Ron and Hermione exchanged nervous glances once again and Ron was suddenly reminded of their Fifth Year together, the last time that he and Hermione had really been friends. They had been so close at that time that they had barely needed to talk to know what the other was thinking. There was an acute feeling of loneliness when he realized that the person who still knew him best was a girl that he had barely spoken to in the last three years.

Ron knew exactly what she was thinking. Both of them were relieved that Harry's memory didn't seem to be so terribly damaged that he had been unable to recall the information that he needed but also thankful that the Order had been right in their assumption that Harry would have no idea that he was technically he was the owner of Grimmauld Place. He had been arrested before the will had been officially settled and obviously no one had ever informed him. There had been some concern that Harry would have figured out that Sirius would have had no other heir to leave anything to, but obviously the thought had not occurred to Harry and they were grateful for that.

That had been the second largest debate of the Order- where to house Harry once he was released. No one was happy about bringing him back. Some for more personal reasons- this was where Sirius had tried to reconnect with his godson and he had been lying to them all. Most for practical reasons. It was dangerous to work against a wizard in their own home and they all knew it. However, Number 12 had served as Headquarters for so long that it had seemed too difficult to move locations, even temporarily, and no other place offered as much security as their unplottable, invisible fortress. It made things a lot easier to know that Harry would not realize that implications of being confined to a Wizarding House that he was the true master of.

They ushered Harry quickly into the House and they made their way not into the basement kitchen but into the back parlor that they had been using for some of their smaller meetings. Not all of the members could make it. Everyone was well aware that it was going to be a busy week and most people had tried to get as much time off from their jobs as possible without raising too much suspicion but it had also been agreed that perhaps it would be fitting for Harry to first meet with people that he recognized- good and bad- to set him in the right frame of mind to be cooperative. Harry remained silent and obedient as he walked, as though unbothered about where they were headed or who he might see.

There were a few members already present but the already stiff conversation ended abruptly as soon as they arrived. The tension in the room was thick and there was a feeling of bleak anticipation. A feeling of people steeling themselves for a fight that they were reluctant to have in the first place.

Harry stiffened slightly but did not react- avoiding both Lupin's harsh glare and Ron's mother's tearful eyes. He had not seen any of them since his trial and Ron would have expected an outpour of emotion now, but for all the notice he gave them, they might well have been strangers...except for tension that ran through him that only one that was lightly gripping his upper arm would notice.

The one face that he studied in the room for a moment was that of Severus Snape- the spy that he had revealed to Voldemort and could have gotten killed. And what a strange sight that face was. When they had been at Hogwarts, Snape had always hated Harry. He had glared at him, yelled at him, gone out of his way to try and humiliate and intimidate him and yet now- when the man had every reason to hate the boy that was being led into the room in handcuffs, there was a strangely blank expression on his face. Mild curiosity in his black eyes as he studied the prisoner in front of him. Ron noted that Harry's eyes narrowed ever so slightly at the potions master- though whether it was in dislike or merely thoughtfulness it was hard to say.

"Take a seat," Ron said pulling Harry roughly towards the nearest chair. He was struggling to maintain his role of jailer, as the future Auror that would have to deal with transporting prisoners on a regular basis, but a part of him distantly realized that the other man was so weak that their day of travel that he had tired quickly. Harry really needed to sit down.

For the first time all day Harry resisted a direct command, leaning slightly towards Ron he said in a low voice that could not draw the attention of the others in the room. "Can I have the seat by the window?"

Ron froze, startled by the longing, the hint of a plea that refused to sound desperate, in his former friend's voice. It was the first request that Harry had made. He hadn't even questioned how long his release was supposed to be for. He had seen how Harry had looked outside at the cloudy May day- only peeks of sunlight shooting through the clouds. He hadn't even considered why Harry had been so taken with the sight of it.

At his silence Harry sighed but when he spoke a bit of the former bite from before entered his tone and it was clear that although he was desperate for the chance to be close to the fading light of the sunset, he was not going to beg them. "I'm not planning on escaping. I still have the restraints on, I'm outnumbered by 20 to 1 and where the hell would I go anyway? I just… I would like to sit near the sun for the one day that I'm not Azkaban."

Ron nodded, unable to reply to such a pathetic request, and began to lead Harry over to the group of chairs by the large bay window in the back of the room.

"Aw look at that, the gang's all back together again then?" Malfoy asked snidely as he took in the sight of Harry once again in the company of Ron and Hermione after so many years.

"Draco," Harry greeted neutrally. "Fancy seeing you here, you're in the Order of the Phoenix." It was a simple statement, without question or irony present- somehow Harry didn't seem at all surprised to see his former rival in the place that would have once been his.

"Well you proved it first Potter, we don't always follow our parents' example, do we?"

In spite of the truth in the statement Ron still felt himself color with anger. He had never trusted Malfoy, not matter how many times others had argued on his behalf, continually offering evidence of the things he had done to help their cause. Ron still protested his admittance into the Order and honestly had no intention of ever stopping. The others, including Hermione, said that it was nothing but an old school grudge. That he was allowing his personal feelings to color how he felt. Hermione especially had lectured him on this topic as she also didn't like the ferret, but had accepted that he was on their side. Despite the constant criticism from the others Ron found himself unable to kick the instinctual feeling that rose within him to be wary of the now former Slytherin. Then again he had once trusted Harry…maybe that said something about his judgment.

Harry gave that bitter smile that seemed to be his greatest defense against unwanted information, "This is really a crack team they've assembled, don't you think? Me they send to Azkaban without a second thought but you they trust with their deep dark secrets. Unbelievable."

Draco's reply was cut off by a harsh rebuttal, "That's what I said when I heard what you did. _Unbelievable_!"

"Ginny-" Fred began

"No Fred, don't start! I trusted you Harry! I thought that you were a good person, but even though you had every reason to turn away from Voldemort you still took the Dark Mark the first chance you had. Draco had to turn away from his _entire_ family but he still did the right thing. He's a better person than you ever were."

"Did he?" Harry asked quietly, his piercing green eyes cutting through Malfoy in such a way that even Ron couldn't blame the blond for shifting uncomfortably.

"That is enough," Dumbledore said with firm finality as he came into the room. "Draco has proven that he is loyal to our cause. He has never been a Death Eater and has worked hard to gain our trust," he said to Harry with a look that suggested that Harry had done the exact opposite. He then turned to Ginny. "Harry has been paying for his mistakes and perhaps is attempting to atone for some of them by helping us now. We can only hope that his time in Azkaban has taught him that we pay a steep price for vengeance."

Harry said nothing. Dumbledore had once been his mentor and Ron knew that a part of Harry, even now, had to have been dying inside to know that he had lost the man's respect so completely. Still it was hard to reconcile the boy that Ron remembered as being so hurt by Dumbledore's refusal to even look him in the eye with the man that calmly accepted the Headmaster's dismissal of him.

Harry took his proffered seat by the window, Ron sitting next to him out of duty instead of friendship. Hermione, Ron was slightly surprised to note, took the seat on his other side. Fred and George sat on the other side of Harry, both them unexpectedly quiet for the moment. Dumbledore continued with a slightly warmer tone in his voice. In fact, no one in the room seemed quite sure what to say and there was a moment of tense silence.

It came as no surprise really that it was Dumbledore to speak first, his own voice calm and pleasant, as though the last time he had spoken to Potter had been merely days ago and not years. "I must say Harry I was pleased to hear that you were so willing to help us."

There were several grunts around the room and skeptical glances that were thrown in Harry's direction. "Yeah shocking that he would turn his back just as easily on Voldemort as he did on us," Remus muttered loudly, his eyes trained on Harry with dark suspicion.

"I'm sure the rest of you are just as surprised as I am that he jumped at the chance to get out of Azkaban," Kingsley added with bitterness.

Again Harry said nothing and Ron was almost impressed with his newfound self-control. He remembered the Harry that had been quick to anger, unable to stop himself from flying off the handle, particularly in the face of such taunts and sneers. The boy that had stood in front of Umbridge, shaking with anger when she had dared to call him a liar. The boy who had gotten numerous detentions in potions because he had refused to back down when he felt insulted. Now Harry seemed unaffected. He wondered if it was time in Azkaban or just simply the fact that Harry cared so little for their opinion now that he had switched sides that nothing they could say was of any importance to him.

"I have a few announcements before we get started with the real purpose of tonight's meeting. We've received word that our last raid was successful, 14 newly recruited Death Eaters have been captured and are facing trial within the week. It's expected that they will receive life sentences in Azkaban under the Enemies of the State Law," Dumbledore explained to the assembled crowd. There was a round of applause at the news, celebrating their victory. This was a normal reaction to a successful mission but Ron noticed that the fervor was a bit more intense. It was as though the Order members were almost deliberately rubbing their victory in the face of their enemy. Harry had a slight frown on his face, his lips pursing in disapproval, obviously unhappy that his side had taken such a hit. His eyes closed again for a moment and Ron began to recognize the action as something Harry did to collect his thoughts.

" _Exactly_ where they belong," Remus said loudly with a pointed look in Harry's direction.

"Here, here," Mad-Eye agreed. Ron saw that Neville was nodding quietly from his side and that Harry had been watching to see what his former dormmate would say. Neville had once looked up to and admired Harry, and perhaps Harry thought that Neville would still see him as the person that had once defended him to the Slytherins. But Neville had grown a lot in the past three and half years- and part of that was seeing Harry for who he really was. Neville was no longer the shy, clumsy boy who allowed himself to be forgotten while other people spoke around him. He was now one of the best fighters in the Order and had proven himself to be a true leader.

Far from the nearly invisible classmate that he had been in their younger years, Neville had a way of commanding a room and made his opinion on topics known. In fact, against all odds, Ron would say that apart from Dumbledore it was Neville that more and more people looked to for answers- even subconsciously. He had caught himself doing it, turning to see what the blond boy thought of a certain topic before making up his own mind. It was something he had once done with Harry but if you had told him First Year that one day he would be seeking the approval of Neville Longbottom- the same boy who had set a first semester record for most trips to the infirmary, he would have laughed at you.

Part of Ron, the one that still couldn't forget that he was sitting next to the best friend that he had ever had- the part that missed him far more than he ever wanted to admit- wondered what Harry would make of Neville now.

But here, once again, was proof that times had changed. Neville was the one that people looked to for answers and Harry sat silently, brooding over the loss of more young Death Eaters.

Dumbledore's eyes were on Harry, gauging his reaction. Ron thought the man was disappointed in Harry's sympathy for Death Eaters, as though hoping that time spent in Azkaban had changed his mind.

"Before we get into the rest of our reports I thought that we should get to the point of bringing Mr. Potter here. Charlie, if you would be so kind as to bring our informant in?"

Charlie nodded and went out to get the runespoor. There was tense silence in the room. Ron saw his mother looking at Harry with pain in her eyes and he felt anger well up inside him all over again at the pain his friend had caused her. She had treated him as if he were one of her own children and he had turned his back on her as easily as he had everyone else. While most people had reacted to Harry's betrayal with anger, his mother had simply been crushed. She had cried for the remainder of that summer and had been inconsolable on September First when the train had departed with Harry still in prison. It had been his mother's heartbreak and slide into depression as much as the loss of his friend that had led to Ron's anger issues in his Sixth Year.

Charlie reappeared with the magical leash that contained the runespoor, all three heads hissing at each other. Harry's head was tilted slightly and Ron knew immediately that he could hear everything that they were saying. The room was silent, waiting for Harry to speak.

Harry, however, waited a moment. Apparently listening to the three heads speak first until he at last opened his mouth and that strange evil sounding hissing came out. There was some mutterings from some of the members that had never heard parseltongue, Ron knew that it was a strange thing to hear for the first time and wasn't surprised to hear Mundungus mutter softly, "and we were surprised that he turned dark?"

The snake heads reacted immediately to the sound of a human speaking their language. They seemed surprised but incredibly excited and the hissing of the snakes grew louder and faster in speed. Ron saw Harry frown as he continued to question it until finally he raised his voice-the hissing sound that came out was low and threatening and Ron knew that he wasn't the only one in the room that felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

The runespoor shrunk down, suddenly still except for its trembling. It looked clearly nervous, and it seemed clear that Harry had threatened the creature in some way, and that whatever he had said had been incredibly convincing.

The other members of the Order looked taken aback, suddenly weary of their decision to deal with Potter at all. This was a wizard that had betrayed them and was under the strictest control that they could manage but he was also powerful. Apparently even Azkaban hadn't changed that about him.

Harry continued speaking this time softer, but his face stern, his eyes flashing green and there was a sense of…authority about him that Ron had felt during a few of their DA meetings in Fifth Year. It struck him for the first time that Harry had only been 15 at the time. It hadn't seemed to matter much back then- he had been all of five months older than Harry after all and teenagers never quite realized how young they really were- but it suddenly seemed strange that someone so young could have been so self-possessed. So powerful and commanding.

Neville glanced at Harry nervously; his face was thoughtful as he considered Harry carefully. His usual confidence of the recent years somehow strangely diminished, as though the mere return of Harry had regressed him the maturity of his 15 year old self.

Harry looked up and closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, being sure to look away from the snake before he spoke. "Other than the attack that Voldemort is planning, did you want to know anything else?" There were still a few winces around the table at hearing the evil wizard's name. Strange that a cowardly Death Eater could still say the name so easily while so many of the people fighting against him had trouble with it. Snape in particular ground his teeth in irritation.

"Can you find out if Voldemort is using snakes as spies inside the Ministry? We're still unsure how he's getting certain pieces of information?" Dumbledore asked kindly. Harry nodded and turned back to the runespoor. His speech seemed fluid and natural and Ron more so than the rest of them knew that Harry couldn't even tell the difference between English and parseltongue when he spoke it.

There seemed to be a point of contention between the three different heads but unlike last time when Harry had reprimanded it with stern anger, Harry was quiet as the three of them seemed to argue among themselves. Whatever Harry had said to them earlier had been effective- the runespoor seemed to be completely subservient to him. It was more than a bit creepy.

At long last Harry leaned back in his chair, his energy seemingly spent in one painful motion. He was weary, tired to the bone and there was a strong feeling that he all he wanted to do was go to sleep even though it was still early evening.

He sighed and turned slightly in Ron's direction. Ron was suddenly forcibly reminded of the time in their Second Year when the two of them had journeyed into the Chamber of the Secrets and Harry had had to check with him to see whether he was speaking parseltongue or English.

"Still sound incredibly creepy?" he asked tiredly.

Ron grinned, "worse, now your voice is all hoarse- makes you sound like an old man."

There was small glint of humor in Harry's expressionless eyes, "beats Voldemort's high pitched voice, you would think he was the world's scariest 6 year old if you heard him."

The comment was so unexpected that Ron gave a sharp gasp of laughter, so did Hermione and the twins but almost everyone was glaring in Harry's direction. Obvious disapproval in their eyes at his light tone.

"Clever Potter, most Death Eaters are too scared to insult their master, even behind his back. But if you think we'll take a few pathetic remarks and think that you've changed, than you can forget it," Mad-Eye growled.

The humor left Harry's face, small and brief as it had been there. "Can someone take the runespoor out of here? If I see it I might start talking in parseltongue again which might get a bit confusing for all of us."

Charlie used the magical leash that was used to keep the dangerous creature under control and left the room. Ron was a bit surprised that Harry waited until he came back to starting explaining the conversation he had just had- courteous enough to know that Charlie would want to hear all of the information first hand.

"Alright, what do you want to know first?"

Dumbledore started with the easy questions, ones that would make it painfully obvious straight away to know if Harry was lying to them.

"Will there be another attack?"

Harry nodded, unsurprised by the question but also with a bit of impatience as though he was also fully aware that they already knew that much and they were merely wasting his time. "Yeah, apparently Voldemort was really pleased about the results from the last time. He liked the panic it caused and you know how much Voldemort loved reminding people that he's Slytherin's Heir. My guess is that commanding a snake army does wonders for his ego."

"When will this attack happen?"

"That wasn't clear. It took a few questions and they claim a week from Saturday when it's crowded in the streets but I don't know if they're actually sure or if that's a tentative plan, my guess is tentative. It doesn't help that you captured him three days ago… which means his information is old at this point. The runespoors are essentially on standby until Voldemort is ready to move with his Death Eaters, they don't get a lot information beforehand."

There were some nods around the table from a few of the people that had been in favor of trusting Harry. So far their information matched. The Order had essentially been on high alert ever since the first attack by the runespoors. The first time Voldemort had used the creatures had been only three months previously, but the effect had to have been even better than the evil wizard had anticipated. Absolute pandemonium had ensured in Diagon Alley making it one of the first fully successful campaigns since Tyson had taken office and revolutionized the Auror's fighting forces. Now that Voldemort had at least temporarily found a weak spot in their defenses they had all known that another attack was coming, they also knew where it was going to happen, they were only unsure of a precise date.

"Where is the attack going to occur?" Dumbledore pressed and the Order held their breath. They knew the site was Hogsmeade every piece of intel they had all confirmed the same information and this was where they were truly testing to see if Harry was going to tell the truth or not.

Harry frowned for a minute, "that was when they started lying to me."

There was a burst of mutters, protests and gasps from the room and Remus was practically shouting at Dumbledore to know that Harry was the one that was really lying about everything.

The calmest question came from Neville, who seemed suddenly determined to prove that the Order had chosen their new unofficial leader well. "How would you know if they were lying to you? What information about an attack do you have?" This set off even more alarm bells with the people in the room.

"Oh hello Neville," Harry greeted with biting sarcasm, "nice to see you as well. Thanks for asking how I've been. The weather this time of year around Azkaban is bit dull but really, not much to report. How's things with you?"

Neville flushed at being called out but doggedly repeated his question, "how do you know?"

Harry shrugged slightly, "they started off by bragging that the next attack would be the ultimately victory because, they _claimed_ , that Voldemort was leading the next attack, which is obviously a lie."

"Why do you think that would be a lie?" Kingsley asked, his deep voice more thoughtful than suspicious at the moment.

Harry shook his head, "Voldemort is too cowardly to be at the front of a battle and since in his mind he's the only one alive with the 'gift of parseltongue' he doesn't need to be in the front of a battle for everyone to know he's the one commanding it. Besides…there's something much more important that Voldemort needs to do."

"And how can he know if they'll follow his orders if he isn't leading the attack?" Draco asked in drawling voice, attempting to point out the flaw in Harry's logic. "The Da-" Draco cleared his throat and started again. "You-Know-Who doesn't leave things up to chance."

Harry gave his school-yard rival a twisted smile, "No…your _Dark Lord_ doesn't leave things to chance but you need to understand the relationship that snakes have with humans that can speak with them. I didn't know much about it myself until I learned about it from my cellmate in Azkaban- or saw it just now for that matter. The communication between snakes and humans is rare- which makes it a powerful connection when it does happen. Snakes are strangely loyal to whoever they consider their king- and Voldemort makes sure that he is that person."

"So if he's not planning on leading the attack, what's he really planning?" Bill asked with a frown, they were now journeying into information that none of them had expected. Truth be told, the plan to get Harry to pass information that they already knew was a weak ploy at best. One that more and more Ron didn't know why they had even bothered doing. Harry had seen through their scheme before they had even left Azkaban but there had been no time for them to change plans and quite frankly Ron imagined that most of them were more curious just to see how Harry react to any situation that they placed him in.

The very last thing that they had anticipated was Harry brining up insight into the enemy's mindset and possible plans that they were unaware of despite their own spy network. At the moment though, they couldn't be sure whether or not they were finding out things even they didn't know- or Harry was just a better liar than any of them had expected.

Harry gave a light smile, "Finally someone who's asking the right question- that was my response as well."

"It's a distraction," Fred breathed quietly, understanding dawning in his eyes. Harry turned to him and this time is smile was more genuine. "Right in one Fred."

"So what's the distraction from?"

Harry's eyes glinted with new resolve. "That... I will tell you tomorrow."

"What?"

"Stop playing games!"

"I say we use veritaserum," Mad-Eye growled.

"Oh so now veritaserum works on me right? I seem to remember that you were all under the impression at my trial that I had developed a mysterious intolerance to it," Harry snapped.

"Harry, you must realize how important this information is," Dumbledore reasoned.

"It's nothing that can't wait a day. I've played your little game and I beat your little test. All of you know that the runespoors are set to attack in Hogsmeade," this information was met with a few shocked glances from those that had not realized that Harry had caught on to their test from the beginning.

"I knew that you would know that much before I even got here. But since apparently you don't have another workable spy and of course Draco's been keeping his mouth shut- surprise, surprise- that means you need me."

"What makes you think I would know anything Potter? I've told the Order everything!" Draco claimed defiantly, Ginny piously nodding beside him in a way that made Ron throw up a little in his mouth.

Harry gave him a cool look, somehow conveying more in a glance than any amount of words would have been able to accomplish. He turned back to rest of them with the same resolve. "You don't trust me, that's fine I sure as hell don't trust any of you but you want my help with whatever it is that really convinced the Minister to grant me temporary freedom. We all know that translating parseltongue isn't a reason to get me out of Azkaban… at most you would have just brought the runespoor with you. You want my help- I want a night in an actual bed. Anything else I give you, you can consider a bonus. Those are my terms, take it or leave it."

"You sneaky backstabbing-"

"Remus, that's enough," Dumbledore said calmly. In truth they had little to lose, they had already planned on having Harry for the week, they just hadn't told Harry that. For all he knew they had only needed him for a few hours or possibly a day. He was dragging his heels to enjoy the respite that he had, and honestly Ron couldn't say that he was surprised or even really blame him for it.

Dumbledore continued, "I feel that is a fair bargain. If Harry does in fact have valuable information than it will be well worth the wait. If it turns out he is only lying to us to further Voldemort's agenda I don't see how offering him one night of comfort can do us any harm."

There were a few more protests but Ron knew better than to think that they would change Harry's mind. When Harry was adamant about something he fought for it till the bitter end, that much he knew for certain about him. It was therefore reluctantly agreed upon that they would all meet again the next day.

Ron led Harry upstairs. With another prisoner Ron might have even felt satisfied that they were only allowing him to think that he had temporarily gotten the upperhand, but somehow Ron rather thought that Harry knew exactly what he was doing. Dumbledore had already charmed Sirius' old bedroom into a temporary holding cell. Everything was the same but they had made it impossible to escape from.

Anti-disapparation wards

Sealed windows with unbreakable glass

Wards that instantly revealed if anyone were to leave the room

With these precautions in place Ron was able to remove the chain linking the metal cuffs of the restraints. The cuffs themselves would remain in place and continue to block Harry's ability to do magic but at least he would be able to move his hands.

Harry gazed into his godfather's former bedroom with an expression of longing and Ron realized that his earlier question had been answered- there were in fact still a few traces of his best friend after all.

 **A/N: Thank you all for your reviews, some of them have been very detailed and insightful and I appreciate the interest that so many of you have shown in this story.**

 **I just wanted to clear up one thing that someone brought up in a review about Hermione. They brought up that it was very out of character for Hermione to ever be with someone like Thurston Grey and the truth is- they are absolutely right. Canon Hermione, who has strong, reliable friendships, grows into a confident woman that expects, even demands, the best standards in things. The best from the Ministry, the best from herself and the best from a romantic relationship.**

 **The world we're in now is very much a 'It's a Wonderful Life' scenario in which Harry isn't simply never born, but plucked out of their lives, and all of them suffer for it. In this chapter we learn that Ron has become isolated from any real, lasting friendships and instead is largely left with only job as something to fill his time. In coming chapters we'll see a few others that have been affected as well.**

 **A lot of people have been screaming for vengeance on the Order and to be clear, things will not be easily forgiven. Harry will continue to want a 'tit for tat' working relationship. He gives them something, he wants something in return. However, one thing to keep in mind is that while none of them have suffered nearly as much as Harry has, for the most part none of his former friends have been happy in these intervening years. In their own ways they too have hurt though in far more subtle (probably less sympathetic but more realistic) ways.**


	9. Reflections on a Lost Life

**Chapter 9: Reflections on a Lost Life**

Harry had never been in Sirius' room before but in a lot of ways he had never felt more at home in his life. The room _felt_ of his lost godfather. From the red and gold trimmings to the muggle bikini-clad girls festooned on the wall of the decrepit house, Harry was pleased to see that in spite of all the things that the Order had seemingly helped themselves to over the years from the vacant house, they had least left this room alone. Memories that Harry had thought the Dementors had stripped him of forever came slowly towards the surface.

Sirius looking at Harry with a furious pride merely for being his godson, Sirius asking him on the way back to the castle when they had still had Pettigrew bound and captured if he would want a new home, the two of them meeting one night down in the kitchen long after everyone else had gone to bed and sharing a cup of tea. Harry anxiously awaiting letters in the morning from the only adult that had ever taken the time to send them and the joy at seeing that messy scrawl on paper on those days when Sirius had managed to write.

There had been many times over the last few years when Harry had wondered how his godfather would feel about his arrest and subsequent conviction. Sirius had been the only other person who would have truly understood what it meant to spend time in that hell scape that called itself a prison, the only other person who truly knew what it meant to be accused of a crime and have your guilt be assumed by everyone that you had ever cared about and believed cared about you. When he had first learned of Sirius' innocence he had been horrified to even think about having to spend so many years with the Dementors. As his greatest fear, at the time, Harry could imagine no greater torment than to having to live with those demon-like creatures day in and day out for years on end.

However, he had never truly appreciate the sure agony that Sirius must have felt when no one had spoken up for him. At least Harry had been given a trial- poor as it had been, the Ministry had taken the time to convince Harry's friends of his guilt. Sirius had been thrown away without a second thought and the Order had done _nothing_. No questions, no visits- not even to find out why Sirius would have turned on his dearest friends for the sake of his supposed victims. Even for James' sake no one had wondered what had led to Sirius' betrayal. Instead they had celebrated. Celebrated the end of the war, the start of their better lives, and if it meant that Lily and James Potter were dead and Sirius Black was in prison that was just the cost of their security, wasn't it?

When he had had these thoughts in Azkaban he was usually able to convince himself that Sirius would have been the lone holdout. The only person to believe that Harry was innocent and would have argued himself hoarse with the others for daring to believe that Harry of _all_ people would join the man that had killed his parents. Sadly, even in his fantasies though, not much changed in the end. Sirius had always been overlooked and ignored by the Order. They had treated him like a damaged child, convinced that he was too immature or too much of a liability to bother to entertain his suggestions. But in those fantasies Sirius' belief in him never waived. Sirius would have trusted him, had always been the one true parent-figure that Harry had ever known in his life. The one person that had ever truly made Harry feel like he had a family.

Being in his godfather' hated house, in the childhood bedroom that looked as though it had been meticulously designed to incite rage in his pureblood fanatic parents, all of his former fantasies seemed more real to him than ever before. Sirius _would_ have believed him and Harry felt a well of longing for the man.

Coming back here had been harder than he had expected. After the daily tortures of Azkaban, the pain of losing both Maggie and Felix so recently, he had thought that he had grown all but impervious to pain.

But that was before he had had to see their eyes.

Remus hated him, plain and simple. The man had glowered at him with a ferocity of the wolf inside him. It was clear that the man considered Harry's actions a personal affront to him. Possibly a direct betrayal of his parents and Remus felt that as their last remaining friend he should carry that anger himself. But Harry found that of all of the people, Remus' contempt bothered him the least. If there was one thing Azkaban had given Harry, it was time to think. And if there was one conclusion he had come to it was that Remus Lupin had never deserved half the trust Harry had given him. When he considered what Remus had done for him it came to a short list. One of the best things that could be said about him was that the only DADA teacher to not actively try to hurt or kill him, though his own reckless stupidity had nearly accomplished the task anyway when the man had forgotten to take the Wolfsbane on the night of the full moon.

He had taught him the Patronus Charm and yet...he had been the Defense teacher. When Harry had told Felix about all of the great time and energy Lupin had taken to teach him this special skill and how it had been one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for him, Felix had looked at him a bit blankly and asked if he had never sought out any other extra help tutorials from his professors. Felix had been adamant that as professors it was their duty to teach and instruct and he further believed that for a teacher, there should have been no greater delight than meeting a gifted student that was eager to learn an advanced skill and was dedicated to putting into the time and effort to learn. Felix had then been shocked when he had learned that Lupin had only agreed to help after Harry had practically begged the man and had made no offers to the more senior students to offer them help as well when the Dementors were surrounding the school.

After Third Year Lupin had never reached out to him, never wrote him a letter. Even when Sirius had died the only effort the man had extended on his behalf was to show that he had known all along that the Dursleys had treated him terribly and then to issue a challenge on the man. Harry often wondered, alone in his cell, if the Order's intimidation tactic hadn't been the last straw with his uncle. The reason why he had decided to sell him out the Death Eaters. Logically he knew it probably didn't matter. Vernon had made his decisions but when he was feeling particularly embittered, he liked to lay this final unforgivable crime at their doorstep.

There had been others at the meeting that had shared in Remus' contempt: Shacklebolt, Tonks, Moody and quite a few new members that Harry hadn't recognized but somehow felt entitled to feel betrayed by Harry. Mrs. Weasley had looked at him as though he had died a tragic death in her eyes, so that she could never really see him again. And Harry found that it had been her reaction that had cut him the deepest. Mrs. Weasley had often annoyed him with her fussing and claims that he was too young to know what was going on, but from the moment he had met the matronly woman she had treated him like family. Treasured, delicate family that she was delighted to see at every turn. Unlike the others, she showed him no anger but he could see a well of pain in her that difficult to be upset with.

There was Dumbledore's disappointment, Neville's casual dismissal, Draco's suppressed glee. It had all been too much for him and he didn't think he was ever so happy to be alone at the moment.

He had wanted to escape the cold misery of the Dementors, even if only for a single day and instead he had provided himself with a wealth of new material to be tormented with in the years to come on his life sentence.

Ron and Hermione had grown up. Ron had a scruff of red beard and his shoulders were broader, his muscles clearly defined and his movements more graceful and confident than they had been as a gangly teenager. His eyes were sharper than Harry remembered as well. He wasn't quite sure what was different but they seemed darker, slightly wearier than they had been back in Fifth Year. Hermione had filled out, her body curvier and face clearer and smoother than it had been at the height of adolescence. Not that her skin had been particularly blotchy or pockmarked but it had contained the typical trials of a teenager. He wondered if the two of them were together. Possibly engaged at this point. Towards the end of Fifth Year they had certainly been dancing around one another but he hadn't been able to tell much about their relationship from their interactions today.

He had been quite proud of himself for holding together as well as he had managed during their initial meeting. Years of interrogation 'practice' had enabled Harry to maintain a stoic mask no matter how he felt and when he had seen Ron and Hermione seated in the visiting room after nearly four years of silence he had been shocked. There had been a split second, barely even noticeable to his own mind, when he had seen them and thought that they had come to tell him that they had finally come to their senses. That they had at long last thought through everything that had been said at the trial and had at long last realized that the Ministry was wrong.

Harry was not naïve. He knew how an experienced interrogator could get their witnesses to believe nearly anything they wanted. Felix had told him that even in the muggle world there had been cases of people that had actually confessed to crimes that they hadn't done after being confused by hours of questioning. The difference, obviously, being that after the questioning was over facts usually prevailed. The person would know that they had been manipulated, even if had been too late. As angry as Harry had been at the time of his trial over his friends' betrayal, over time and long exposure to the tactics in the Auror's training classes he had learned how thoroughly they could confuse even the smartest of people. He had grown to accept that it had been the Aurors that were truly responsible for what they had done. But the Aurors had not prevented his friends from rethinking things. The Aurors had not stopped them from visiting to find out the real truth.

Harry had been entirely truthful when he had told Ron that they were no longer friends.

He thought back over the conversation that he had had with the Order and the information that he had provided them. They were sadly uninformed. Harry remembered wanting nothing more than to be a part of this group when he was 15, now- not even five years later- he found himself nothing but disappointed in their lack of ability to gather information. They had lost their real spy when Snape had been uncovered and replaced with the boy that had sold him to Voldemort in the first place and then supplanted him as a spy. Draco Malfoy had taken over where his father had left off and the Order didn't suspect a thing. Harry was almost impressed, he had never thought much of Malfoy's skills when they were kids.

This was the supposedly the great hope of the Wizarding World? _Fools and incompetents_ , Harry thought angrily. Allowing, if only for a moment, a feeling of contemptuous pleasure to overwhelm him at the realization that they were nothing without his help. They needed him and they were too stupid to even realize that they were helpless. For just a moment he allowed himself some vindictive pleasure…until even that happy thought was ruined by a greater reality. Voldemort was going to win because of the Order's mistakes. And there was almost nothing he could do about it.

Almost…

He was going to have to tell them, that much he knew. It was too important to keep to himself and it was the only way to stop Voldemort, but at the same time he felt as though that he was betraying… friends? It was strange, and no, the prisoners of Azkaban were _not_ his friends. Most of them- nearly all of them- deserved the sentences they had received. They were Death Eaters and enemies and…fellow prisoners that knew far better than the people downstairs what Harry's life had been like for the past four years. Bonded by misery and forced to at least appreciate one another's pain, it was surprisingly difficult to think about turning against some of them.

It was a strange position that he found himself in. He had no friends, no allies in this war. He didn't truly belong anywhere. He wasn't like the prisoners of Azkaban that were all rapists or murderers or thieves. He didn't belong with the Order. He would never be a Death Eater. He hated the Ministry.

He owed his true loyalty to only one person- Daniel Miller, because he had promised Maggie. He wasn't sure if he would ever see the Auror again and despite his promise felt no obligation to track the man down, but if he saw him and was in a position to help he would not forget his word. With no true allies, Harry was only left with the question of who his greatest enemy truly was.

The answer to that was a simple one. Voldemort.

The man that was directly or indirectly responsible for all of the pain in his life. He had killed his parents, killed Cedric and terrorized him, tricked Harry into a position that had led to his godfather's death and then he had orchestrated his arrest. Voldemort deserved and needed to die. And he had promised Maggie. The woman that he loved and longed for and as angry as he was with her for leaving him, he would not forget his promises. Which meant that second on his list was Ivan Tyson.

It didn't matter that he hated the Order, he would work with them. He would use them to get rid of the two people that deserved it the most, even if Harry himself was not sure how he was going to get to Tyson. Harry had always been impulsive and when he had been younger he had been quick to trust anyone that had shown him kindness but that boy was no more. He was on his own side and that was all that mattered. He would need to plan and think things through and that was not an easy position for him when thinking in the past few weeks had become harder for him than ever. He had blanked out again in the car, for how long he wasn't sure but it unnerved him that Ron and Hermione had seen him so vulnerable. That they were no doubt telling the Order about his weakness at this very moment.

It didn't matter. He would tell the Order what he knew- and chances were they wouldn't even believe him. But that was on them. They had betrayed him before. Harry's morality was his own. Doing the right thing was for himself, they were free to heed his warning or watch the world burn around them out of stubbornness.

He was tired and it was difficult to make plans. He had been surprised when they had brought him to Grimmauld Place and perhaps his old suspicions had been wrong. He would need to test his theory the next day but at the moment the thought of sleeping in a real bed was too luxurious to avoid for a moment second.

Shaking off these thoughts, he climbed into Sirius' bed and nearly sighed with relief. After so long of sleeping on a stone bench the mattress was blessedly soft. He fell asleep within minutes and for the first time in years he didn't dream. It was the best sleep of his life.

He awoke to a strange sight, all things considered of course. Two small children were standing next to his bed, peering at him with innocent curiosity.

Harry sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, leaning on his elbow and staring back at the four wide eyes that were peering at him with interest. The first child looked to be five or six the other one only two or three and appeared very proud of himself for making it into the room in the first place. The elder of the boys had sandy brown hair and a wide smile, the younger one was shier, hiding slightly behind his friend (brother? Somehow Harry didn't think so) in the face of a stranger. His bright turquois hair left little doubt in Harry's mind who at least one of the mothers of the boys was. The older of the two boys laughed. "You're awake! Shhh!" he added, "we're not a opposed to be here."

Harry grinned at the two boys. "I don't think that's true for me, I was told to be here. If you're not supposed to come in here, why are you?" he asked.

The older boy rolled his eyes at Harry's stupidity, "because this room gots the coolest stuff, a 'course! See the cool pictures that don't move no matter how much you poke them? Daddy doesn't understand."

"Oh I see," Harry said slowly. "This room is pretty cool but how did you get in here?" he asked again, surprised that two small kids had managed to get into a room that had been specially warded by Albus Dumbledore. The older boy looked at him as though he just asked how to stand up from sitting down. "We opened the door, just like always," he looked around and then whispered to Harry conspiratorially, "don't tell daddy, he tells us not to play here."

Harry nodded his understanding and smiled again. "Your secret is safe with me. I'm Harry by the way."

"I'm Augustus Gwynn, but I like to be called Auggie- that's what Charlie calls me."

Harry thought back but he didn't know anyone with the name of Gwynn- of course that by no means meant he had _never_ known anyone with that name, his memory was not always the most reliable thing nowadays, though he was fairly certain that this time it was not his mind that was the problem.

"How do you know Charlie?"

The boy smiled widely, "Charlie is the best, he's daddy's bestest friend, he lives with us and he and daddy love each other."

Harry smiled, understanding what the boy was calling a 'best friend'. "What about your mother?" he asked, wincing slightly as he wondered if he was wandering into dangerous territory.

The boy shrugged, "she and daddy aren't married anymore. They say that they love each other but then they say they're not really in love- so I think maybe they gets confused. I stay with mummy and Nathan sometimes but I almost always stay with daddy and Charlie. I like it better with daddy."

"I'm sure they like it when you stay with them as well. You seem like a lot of fun to be around," Harry said and Auggie beamed at him.

"Oh sure, lots of fun. I always have to show Teddy how to do things because he's so little that he hasn't learned how yet."

Harry nodded approvingly at this, "It's nice of you to look out for him, little kids need a big kid to look out for them."

"I know right!" Auggie said throwing expressive hands into the air in apparent exasperation.

"And who is this?" Harry asked turning towards the other boy.

The other boy gave a small, shy smile and put his hands over his face as though if he couldn't see Harry, Harry couldn't see him. "Now where did your friend go? He was just here and he had the coolest hair I've ever seen. I want to meet someone that cool."

The boy took away his hands and smiled more boldly, "I'm Teddy and I'm almost free years old," he announced with childish pride as he stuck up four fingers to go alongside of being 'free' years old, though he was trying without success to get his pinky finger down.

"That's a very important age to be," Harry told the young boy seriously, who nodded sagely in return.

"I know your mother, she was very nice to me when I was a kid."

"Mummy's always nice," Teddy said as though this was a clear fact.

"Yes that's true. And what about your daddy?" Harry asked gently, once again unsure if this was a topic he should pursue. Times were difficult and it was never safe to assume that someone fighting with the Order hadn't been killed. He had seen Tonks the night before and she had not seemed to be involved with anyone that was at the meeting, but then again he doubted they would be holding hands and planning a date in front of him either.

"I have no daddy," Teddy said in that indifferent tone that only small children who don't understand what they have lost can have. "But mummy loves we twa-ice as much, she tells me lots."

Harry gave Teddy a small smile, feeling sympathetic towards a young boy who had also lost a parent young in his life, Harry knew what that felt like better than anyone. With the war escalating he shouldn't have felt surprised to learn that Tonks had lost the father of her child, but it still made him sad for their little family. He had few charitable thoughts for the members of the Order these days but that did not extend to their children.

Harry glanced nervously at the door, thinking that someone must have started to notice that the two young kids were missing at this point. "I'm not sure the two of you should stay in here, I don't think your mother or your father would appreciate it," he said pointing to each boy in turn.

Auggie waved this thought aside, "we're a opposed to stay with a grown up, you're here now so we can _stay_ now."

"But I'm a stranger, didn't your parents tell you not to talk to strangers," Harry said carefully, wondering how badly Charlie or Tonks would curse him if someone were to walk into this room and see him with their kids. They would probably accuse him of touching the children or something equally as terrible.

Auggie frowned, "you're not a stranger, you're Harry." He explained just as the door opened and Ron overheard the statement.

Harry immediately put his hands in the air and leaned back, "they came in here, and I was just telling them that they should leave."

Ron gave him a slightly surprised look, as though even he had not thought that Harry was actually hurting the boys. "I know. Steven and Tonks were both out last night on duty and had to leave the kids here since Charlie had business to take care of. He's running a small reserve outside Manchester and there was some sort of an emergency otherwise they wouldn't even be here. Anyway I was looking for them when I realized that they had sunk out of the nursery room and I then I remembered that they love playing in here."

Harry nodded taking note of the name Steven, "how did they even get in here? I thought you lot warded the door?"

Ron grimaced slightly, "er...even though we thought about keeping you from getting out we never really did anything to prevent anyone... from coming in." Harry could only shake his head at this level of incompetence. As much as it galled him that they thought him a ruthless Death Eater and murderer, he at least knew that they believed him to be guilty. Yet they had allowed two small children to wander around. Harry could have snatched them up and used them as hostages for escape. He could have hurt them for pure pleasure. Ron flushed brightly as all of these implications seemed to hit him for the first time as Harry stared at him in a kind of bemused horror. Clearly unsure what to say to address this awkwardness with Harry, Ron turned towards the oldest boy with an unusually stern expression on his face. He looked a bit like Mrs. Weasley in the moment, "Auggie? I thought Charlie told you to play with Teddy in the living room?"

Auggie shuffled his feet, "sorry Ron, but Harry was in here and he's super nice and he's a **grown up** ," he explained as if this made everything completely acceptable.

"But you didn't know that a grown up would be in here when you decided to come up, did you?" Ron questioned with a raised eyebrow.

Auggie seemed at a loss to combat this kind of adult logic, "er…we didn't touch anything bad," he settled on explaining. Ron smiled, "I know Auggie, but this house is dangerous, we told you that. When you come here you have to listen when we tell where you can go, otherwise you can get hurt. You understand, right?"

Auggie looked at his floor and muttered his reluctant understanding if not his acceptance of his rule. "Alright promise me I won't find you in here again and I won't tell your parents where I found you, alright?"

Both boys lit up at hearing that magical phrase and Auggie was quick to yell, "I promise, tell him you promise Teddy."

Teddy looked quickly at Auggie and then back at Ron before shouting out "Pom-mise!" even though it was quite plain that the young boy had no idea what he was really agreeing to.

"Alright, go on downstairs and find your parents, I'm going to talk to your new friend Harry, alright?"

"Can Harry come with us?" Auggie asked.

"Harry nice!" Teddy agreed.

"I don't think he can come right now, maybe a bit later, yeah?"

"Alright," Auggie agreed easily and took Teddy's hand and led him to the door.

When they were gone Ron turned back to him rubbing the back of his neck and looking supremely embarrassed. "Er...sorry about that, I know that wasn't your fault."

Harry shrugged, "I'm just glad that you came in instead of Tonks, if she saw me with her kid she would probably curse me first and ask questions later."

Ron chuckled at the image, "Teddy really takes after his mother, doesn't he?" Realizing quickly how Harry had deduced Teddy's parentage.

Harry grinned, "yeah with that hair it took me about three seconds to work out that Tonks was his mother." They had strangely fallen into their old speaking patterns, light and easy banter between them and for a moment there was a feeling of déjà vu about the whole experience that had Harry feeling almost dizzy and off-center.

He cleared his throat and asked," what happened to his father? Teddy told me that he didn't have one, was it…was it Death Eaters?" Harry winced realizing from him it might sound like a dig. Harry was curious but also didn't want to assume that Tonks had been married at the time that she had gotten pregnant- after all, Maggie and he had hardly been married at the time.

Ron shot him a look of surprise before realization seemingly hit him, "that's right, they only got together after you were sent to Azkaban. Tonks married Remus shortly after your trial, whole thing happened real quick and they were together for...I guess about a year or so but after she got pregnant though…" Ron winced and gave a sympathetic shrug. "Remus started having second thoughts. Said that they had rushed into things because he was upset about losing Sirius…and you in a way. He thought it wasn't fair of him to have a family considering the fact that he's a werewolf. He was scared for a really long time that Teddy would be born like him. Anyway...he left. I think they're technically still married but they've been separated for years. Remus keeps his distance from both of them."

Harry felt himself getting slowly angrier until he heard the blood pounding in his ears. He had lost his child because of circumstances that he couldn't control. It was a fact of his life that ate away at him day by day. Haunted his thoughts, poisoned his mind. He would give anything to have Maggie and their child back- even if it meant that he had had to spend the rest of his life in Azkaban staring at them through the bars, he would have done anything for them. It would have killed him to be apart from them, but there would have been nothing that he could do, the thought of walking away voluntarily was unimaginable. Remus had the opportunity to be with his family and he had thrown it all away out of fear. Out of selfish fear that helped no one but probably made him feel good about his own self-sacrifice.

"He just walked out on them?" Harry asked, his voice unexpectedly low.

Ron glanced at him sideways, "for what it's worth I think it was really hard on him, Harry. We can't really know what it's like for him."

"What it's like for _him_? What about Teddy? Kids…kids shouldn't be away from their parents unless there's no other way. Teddy deserves to know that his father gives a damn about him."

"Remus is just doing what he thinks is right."

"Right for who? Him? Because it sure as hell isn't doing his son any favors growing up without a father and never being completely sure that the reason he left isn't entirely his fault. Teddy's still young but one day's he's going to get older and when he does...he's going to start asking a lot of hard questions and as much as Tonks is going to want to give him answers she won't be able to."

Ron gave him a long searching look before he finally spoke with unusual insight, his voice quiet, almost gentle, "Teddy growing up with Tonks isn't like you growing up with Dursleys. They were horrible to you, I know that. They messed you up in a lot of ways, I know that now a lot better than I did when we were kids, but Tonks loves that kid- and Teddy knows it."

Harry let out a slow breath and struggled to keep his temper in check. It was the first time in quite a while that he had felt anything as passionate as anger. After he had held Maggie in his arms for the last time, slowly watching her die minute by painful minute he had gone numb. He had sunk into a depression that had almost protected him from fully feeling pain- but had stripped him of all feeling as well.

"Ron… you will never truly understand what the Dursleys did to me, no matter how evil you think they are, there's even more that you don't know, but that's not my point. My point is Remus has a family- do you realize how lucky that makes him? He should be grateful for it every day of his life. He should protect it with every last ounce of his strength and instead he just walks away from it!"

Ron was studying him carefully, an odd expression on his face. He clearly didn't know what to make of Harry's strong defense of needing a family- after all in Ron's eyes Harry was nothing but a traitorous Death Eater. Family shouldn't have meant anything to him.

After a moment Ron spoke, his voice was low, his eyes serious but hesitant and Harry could see that he was voicing a thought that he must have been having for a very long time. "Harry…if the Dursleys were really that bad…why didn't you come to us? That was the thing that Hermione and me never understood. We talked about it for days after…after the trial. Hermione cried for hours, she was a mess because she blamed herself for not being able to help you. I…" he took a deep breath and pressed forward. "After all this time I just want to know why it was that you never came to anyone for help."

Harry dragged both of his hands across his tired face. A part of him resented Ron for even having the gall to ask him about this now. He had meant what he had told the red-head the day before- they were no longer friends. Harry knew that his friends had been upset by his arrest. He knew that they had taken no pleasure in testifying against him. He even knew that they thought that they were doing the right thing by telling the truth as they knew it.

But they had still not believed him.

Still never paused to consider that there was more to his story.

After everything the three of them had been through, they had never once stopped to think that there was something that they were missing. Harry would have listened to them if the situation had been reversed, that much he knew for sure. He would have listened because he had learned the hard way that things were not always what they appeared to be. But his friends had never offered him the benefit of the doubt- and yet now, far too late, they were asking for explanations.

When he spoke he was slightly surprised by how tired his voice sounded, even to his own ears, because the truth was he had had far too much time to think everything over and it all came back to the same answers. "Ron…I told everyone that I ever spoke to that I hated living with the Dursleys. I stayed at Hogwarts during every possible school break, I actually asked to stay during the summer once. I told Dumbledore and your mother that the Dursleys treated me like dirt. You and brothers found me with bars on my window. Everyone has always said that I never asked for help, that I pretended like everything was fine but when did I do that? Merlin, after Hagrid spent 15 minutes with them he was so fed up he gave Dudley a pig's tail, don't you think he might have mentioned at least some of that to Dumbledore? Hagrid's really not much of a secret keeper after all. The first time we met and you asked me about living with muggles, I told you that they were horrible."

"And then you said that not all muggles were- just your Aunt, Uncle and cousin," Ron cut in. "So what changed Harry? When you were eleven you knew enough to know that just because your relatives were horrible to you didn't mean that all muggles were terrible, so why did you join up with Voldemort and plan to kill them all?"

Harry shook his head, his hands curling into fists in his frustration, "maybe those are the questions that you should ask yourself. Ernie McMillian told everyone our Second Year that I was the Heir of Slytherin because _I_ told everyone that would listen how much I hated my muggle relatives. So there's the answer to both of your questions. I _had_ told people what the Dursleys were like and no one seemed to give a damn about it and I wasn't the Heir of Slytherin even though everyone thought that I was…except for you and Hermione that it is."

Ron's face was unreadable, Harry wasn't sure if he believed anything that he had to say but both of them seemed to have exhausted anything that they wanted to say.

"Don't be too hard on Remus," Ron finally said quietly. "We don't know what it's like to have kids so we can't judge him for his decisions."

"Personally I think someone should have set him right. If everyone took the same tract that you did- that Remus has the right to stick his head in the sand because he feels upset about his situation, than he probably has even convinced himself that he was doing the noble thing. It's not, Ron. He's not helping that kid and _someone_ should be looking out for Teddy. Remus is a grown man, I'm not saying he didn't get a raw deal as a werewolf but he's 40 years old, it's time to get the hell over himself and deal with his damn insecurities. He knew he was a werewolf when he married Tonks, he knew he was a werewolf when the two of them didn't use any damn birth control, he made his bed and now he has to lie in it."

Ron raised an eyebrow at Harry at this last comment. "I suppose you know something about that."

Harry let out a long tired sigh, "more than you realize."

HPHPHP

Hermione smiled slightly as the two small boys ducked into the living room with guilty expressions. She had only just arrived at Headquarters and was happy to be away from the brief but rather bitter argument that she had just come from with Thurston that morning. He seemed to think that she should be attending more of the Ministry social functions to make the right connections to further her career and while she could certainly see the value of his advice, she had her obligations to the Order to consider. Unfortunately, without being able to tell him why she was constantly unavailable night after night, and many times on weekends he was growing increasingly impatient with her excuses and felt that she was deliberately shrinking away from promotion. The cynical part of her balked at his anger because she knew that it had little impact on his own life. Even if Hermione was as social as her old classmate Lavender Brown, the two of them were never meant to be in a serious relationship. Still it was an argument that they had had with increasing frequency over the past couple of months and she knew things would soon being coming to a head. If Hermione had stopped to examine her feelings as closely as she examined her reports at work, she might have found it telling that it her predominate feeling at knowing that Thurston would probably break things off with her was relief.

Coming to Headquarters was a strangely welcome respite from the tension at home and seeing two small boys rush in and then give her an all too innocent smiles brought a smile to her own face for the first time all morning, it was obvious that they had been out exploring in the house despite their parents warnings not to go into the numerous dark rooms that the Black family offered. Personally she had never understood why their parents never simply looked them into a properly outfitted room and to ensure that there was no oversight in where they might go. The house had always been dangerous but after Sirius had died and the true master of the house detained from claiming proper ownership, it had become increasingly difficult to manage both Kreacher and the dark aspects of the house more heinous to manage. Hermione was quite sure that she was not the only Order member that was convinced that it was in fact far safer to take their chances in another location than brave the constant dangers of Grimmauld Place simply due to its impenetrable security but somehow the subject of changing venue never seemed to be raised, lost in the shuffle of important news that covered their scattered meetings.

Nevertheless forbidden rooms were always too tempting for young adventurers and Hermione knew that the people that had stayed at Headquarters really shouldn't have expected anything less from the boys.

"And where have you two been?" she asked still smiling but with a sterner note to voice.

"Er…right here?" Auggie tried, with a winning smile.

"Augge! I think you know better than to lie to me, I didn't say that you were in trouble, I asked you where you were. If you were doing something wrong it's much worse to lie about it, isn't it?"

Teddy was nodding sagely next to the older boy. He was still young and had trouble grasping levels of consequences but he had been taught that lying was wrong. "We was talking to Harry! Harry nice!" he proclaimed proudly, but this time the proud smile left Hermione with a sick feeling in her stomach. How had those two managed to find the worst possible room to venture into?

"That was a opposed to be a secret Teddy!" Auggie admonished, his face almost comically exasperated with the younger boy.

"Did Harry tell you not tell anyone that you talked to him?" Hermione asked in surprise. She knew what Harry had become, she had no delusions about anything like an 'honorable' Death Eater but it was still a surprise to learn that Harry would stoop to manipulating children. She kept forgetting that this was not the same boy that she had been friends with, that she had trusted above anyone else.

Auggie, however, looked surprised that this question. "Harry said that we should go and find Teddy's mummy and my daddy because we're not a opposed to talk to him but I told him that we can stay somewhere with a grown up. Harry's a _grown-up_ ," he further explained in case that part of the story wasn't clear.

"Then why was seeing Harry a secret?" Hermione asked shrewdly, but the guilty looks told her everything that she needed to know. "Oh I see, because you two went into a room that you were told to stay out of, _right_?" She sighed, "Auggie, you should know better and more importantly you need to set a good example for Teddy. You know that he follows you around, you need to teach him to do the right thing, not be sneaking off from his mother!"

"I already read them the riot act, Hermione," Ron said coming down the stairs and already looking rather weary from the day despite the fact that it was still midmorning. "They promised me not to go into anymore forbidden rooms, right boys?"

Both boys nodded and Hermione sighed in irritation, of course they would make a promise like that if it meant avoiding punishment but without actual consequences would they actually remember to keep it? That was the point of punishment after all, to reinforce ideas of correct behavior. But she forced herself to stay silent. She was not responsible for the children and it was not her place to criticize. It had always been difficult for Hermione to stay quiet when the right answer was waiting to be said but working at the Ministry, where she had quickly learned that no House Points were awarded for correcting your superiors or even senior staff member and instead was seen as a challenge to authority, she had learned to bite her tongue rather well. It pained her to do so, as though she was losing a piece of herself and she often wondered if in another life she would have been more assertive despite the risks to her own career.

"You found them with Harry?" Hermione asked quietly, not wanting to make this information too well known throughout the house if it could be avoided.

Ron nodded, "snuck in there. Harry looked as though he had just woken up even though its gone eleven, though I suppose the bloke needed the lie in," Ron looked uncomfortable at the mention of Harry's beaten down, weary appearance. It was the weekend which meant that most of the Order was able to be present but they had decided the night before to meet at noon to give everyone time to take care of their own business first.

Ron cleared his throat and said, "He was alright about it though. He was actually in the middle of convincing them to go find their parents when I found them. I think he realized how it would look if someone else in the Order spotted him alone with the two of them. Very careful to keep his hands where I could see them and all."

"Oh Ronald no one could possible think that Harry of all people…"

"Hermione! That isn't really Harry anymore. He has a Dark Mark on his arm. He's a murderer that has been in Azkaban for 4 years- don't act like he's not dangerous."

Hermione nodded stiffly, acknowledging the accuracy of this statement if not the fact that she hated that Ron happened to be right. Ron relented slightly and Hermione guessed that something in her expression had caused him a degree of guilt for snapping. "I get it, Hermione," he admitted quietly. "I know to everyone else here, he's just...he's here because we need him but...he's _Harry._ " Ron shrugged as though unsure even what to say. "He was our best mate. I was just upstairs talking to him and...and its just like it was. He's..." Ron shook his head as though arguing with himself to show that if Harry was the same as he had been, than nothing had changed from the boy that had been proven to betray everything that they had thought that he had believed in.

Hermione coughed, unsure how to respond but glad that she was not the only one to struggle to reconcile what she thought she knew about a boy she had considered practically a brother and the man that every experienced Auror, every Ministry official, but are more importantly- all of her professors and Dumbledore himself were convinced had snapped under the pressure and turned against them.

"Where is Harry now?" Hermione asked glancing quickly behind Ron to see if he had followed him downstairs.

"I let him out, he already knows that the Order's decided to meet in about a half hour but I think he just needed a couple of minutes to get himself together. He'll be down soon though, he knows that he can't drag this out forever."

"No I made a deal, I plan on keeping it," Harry's voice said quietly from the stairs. Hermione blinked, the solid night's sleep had done him good. He was still pale, still thin and run down but he circles under his eyes were lighter and his overall posture... stronger than it had been the night before. She had been slightly surprised that Ron had not stepped in to say something about Harry's strange behavior on the ride to Headquarters when she had not done so. She knew that they should inform the Order of his full condition but she couldn't bring herself to reveal this weakness to people she knew would only use it their advantage and when Ron had stayed silent as well she had once again been reminded why the three of them had once been so inseperable.

"HARRY!" both boys shouted in apparent delight. Hermione was startled. Teddy in particular was a very shy boy, it had taken him a couple of months to warm up to her when Tonks had started to bring him around to their meetings when her mother wasn't available to sit for him, but the small boy seemed to have taken to Harry immediately.

"Hey there Auggie, Teddy. Manage to stay out of trouble for five whole minutes?"

"I think it close to _seven_ minutes," Auggie corrected him seriously.

"Oh in that case you should really be commended on your good behavior. Not too many people can manage to be good for seven _full_ minutes- I wouldn't have thought Teddy would only lasted three. Isn't that right, Teddy?"

Teddy giggled at him and shook his head rapidly in disagreement.

Ginny had come into the room at this point and was eyeing Harry with intense suspicion. She had taken the news of Harry's new allegiances the hardest. As a teenager she had truly believed that she had loved him and saw Harry's betrayal as a knife through her heart- a death to any future that she might have had with him.

"Finally up then?" she snarled at him.

"Oh you mean I should have come down and spent more time with your charming company?" Harry asked with apparent innocence. Ginny glared at him, clearly unsure what to say. Banter had never particularly been Ginny's strong suit.

Neville and Draco had also come in and were taking in the conversation with looks of speculation on their faces, it had been a long time since they had all been at Hogwarts together.

"Hey Harry! Do you know how to fly?" Auggie asked excitedly. "Charlie's been teaching me! I can go up almost as high as the house now, isn't that cool?"

"Very cool, you sound like you're going to be excellent. What position do you want to play when you get to Hogwarts?" Harry asked. Hermione noticed that Harry didn't try and talk down to the boys the way most adults did with small children. He adjusted his words so that they were easier to understand but his tone was level and interested, just as if he were addressing another adult.

"I want to be a Seeker- cause they're the most important part of the game."

"Can't argue with you there mate. I used to play Seeker, it's a great position, isn't it?"

Auggie nodded and stared at Harry with newfound respect, "You played Seeker? Were you really good? Did you catch the snitch?" He asked all of this in rapid succession and in one large breath.

Harry grinned at Auggie's enthusiasm, ticking off each question asked with a finger of his hand as he answered them in order, "Yes I did play Seeker, and yeah I would say I was pretty good if that doesn't sound terribly arrogant (and good Seekers are never arrogant Auggie, remember that when you start winning all your matches) and yes…I have caught a few snitches."

"All of them?" Auggie asked with a challenge.

"No…I don't think anyone catches all of them," Harry said with a smile. "But you'll catch quite a few I'm sure."

Hermione eyed Harry contemplatively. The only match in which Harry had failed to catch the snitch was when Dementors had attacked the pitch. Every other match he had succeeded- even with bucking broomsticks and runaway bludgers. She realized that she had never before truly considered how impressive a feat that really was. After he had been named Gryffindor's youngest Seeker in a Century she had always taken it for granted that Harry had been supremely talented on a broomstick but as she truly thought back on their Hogwarts years it was clear that Harry was not simply talented on a broom- he was the best. Her eyes drifted to Malfoy and she could see that this fact had not escaped his notice either, his face was stuck in a semi-permanent scowl.

"Do you still play Qudditch?" Auggie asked.

Harry shook his head, "no, not for a long time."

"Because you're a grown up?" Auggie asked with a frown on his face, evidently thinking about a time in the future when he too would be a grown up and forced into a life of boredom.

Harry grinned, "No, grownups can still play Quidditch."

"Just not grownups that do bad things," Ginny threw in as Neville shot her a surprised look. "Ginny…I don't think that we have to get into…"

"What? We should act like it's not his own fault, I don't think we should even let the kids anywhere near him!"

"What exactly do you think I'm going to do with the four of you here?" Harry asked indignantly, apparently pushed too far with latest accusation.

"Hello," Daniel Myers greeted them, seemingly aware that he was walking into what was quickly deteriorating into an argument.

"Daniel," Ginny acknowledged with a bit of forced smile. Hermione knew that Ginny had a soft spot for the witty Auror. When Hermione had confided to her what Daniel had told her about his friend, Maggie, Ginny had even had tears in her eyes.

"Auror Myers," Harry acknowledged, hand outreached.

"Potter," Daniel responded with a nod but he took the hand with a warm smile. "Nice to see you out of Azkaban. Furlough for good behavior?"

"Oh absolutely, Higgins volunteered me himself. After all the hard work I've been putting in for him? He owed me."

"Yes and we can all tell that Higgins would be one to pay his debts," Daniel laughed and Harry- incredibly- chuckled as well.

"You two know each other?" Neville asked in surprise.

"Auror Training Program," both of them responded at once; both with expressions of similar distaste on their faces. Hermione felt that old twinge of curiosity at the now repeated mention of something that she had not been able to read up on. She had always hated not knowing things and while much of her old enthusiasm had waned, it was nice to feel that spark of life in her once more.

Daniel recovered his grin quickly as he elaborated, "Potter is the only prisoner that I actually liked."

"Feeling was mutual. Myers is the only Auror I know that wasn't a complete asshole. No offense Ron- really it's a great job, I'm sure you'll love it," he added snidely.

"Remember when _you_ wanted to be an Auror?" Ginny asked rudely. "Instead you decided to become nothing but a second-rate criminal that didn't even get away with their first crime. You-Know-Who must have been really disappointed that you couldn't even kill off a squib without getting caught."

Harry looked at Ginny for a moment, his green eyes piercing through her in a way that made the red-head blink and look away uncomfortably. "I don't think Voldemort was too upset to see me get arrested and sentenced to life in Azkaban."

"You're from Azkaban?" Auggie asked, his eyes wide and full of wonder mixed with a combination of excitement and fear.

The occupants of the room shifted uncomfortably but it was Harry that answered, "sorry Auggie, I didn't want to tell you because I didn't think your dad would want you to know. Yes, I came here from Azkaban but I'm here to try and help the Order with something."

"Did you do something really bad?" he asked.

Harry grimaced and for the first time gave Ginny a truly challenging look, daring her to say something before he responded. He seemed to weigh his words and Hermione was reminded that Harry had never confessed to his crimes and he obviously didn't want to be tricked into doing so now. However, he also seemed strangely...hurt at the idea that one of them was about to step in and explain the situation to the kids themselves. Hermione was once again wondering why in the world the kids had been brought to Grimmauld Place now of all times. "It's very complicated Auggie. Some day when you're a bit older if you still want me to, I will tell you everything that happened that day- if you want. But only when you're older."

"But I'm bigger than Teddy! Why do grown-ups always make you wait until you're older? It's not fair!"

Harry smiled, "I tend to agree with you there mate, but for now all I can say is this- I don't want to lie to you but I don't think anyone would want me to tell you the truth either so I want you to be a bit older so that you can decide for yourself whether or not you think I'm lying. You see…here's a secret a lot of adults don't want you to know. You know when you can tell when grown-ups are lying to you?"

"Harry!" Hermione, Neville and Ginny all shouted in surprise mixed with anger at telling a child that but Auggie only nodded, completely aware of what Harry was talking about.

"Well that's a skill that _usually_ gets even better when you're older, more experienced, see. When I tell you what happened I want you to be able to decide for yourself if you believe me. So are you alright with waiting a few years to decide if you know that I'll tell you the truth?"

Hermione blinked in surprise. This was the Harry that she remembered from Hogwarts. Honest. Sincere. Someone that you could depend on. Ginny was glowering in his direction and it was only Daniel's calming hand on her arm that kept her from shouting out that Harry was guilty of terrible things to the kids and warn them away from him entirely. Hermione was honestly conflicted about how she felt about the whole thing. She could see from Neville's expression that he was thinking along similar lines as herself. Harry had always looked out for Neville and he had been the one that the clumsiest Gryffindor had always looked to reassurance and even protection. Draco's face was unreadable but for some reason there seemed to be a new nervousness to his movements that was not usually present.

Auggie was considering Harry's proposal carefully before breaking into an enormous grin, "sure Harry!"

Daniel chuckled and grinned at Harry with a warmth that took Hermione by surprise given how the two of them knew one another. "I didn't know that you were so good with kids, mate."

Harry's expression flickered and his eyes darkened for a moment, "don't get much opportunity."

Daniel seemed strangely abashed by his own comment, "er…sorry Potter I didn't mean anything like that, it was out of line."

Hermione and Ron exchanged confused looks at this comment, unsure what Daniel was referring to, it certainly seemed to be an innocuous enough comment. Harry waved him aside, "don't be stupid, it's fine but, speaking of that…"

"Ah, excellent, I'm glad to see that we're all ready," Dumbledore interrupted. Looking up Hermione could see most of the other Order members peering in through the doorway that led to the kitchen. Tonks hurried into the room and scooped up Teddy, spending a few moments making sure that he was fine and telling him to behave himself with Auggie while the meeting took place. Hermione watched as Harry squared his shoulders as though he was not attending a meeting but a battle and all other concerns seemed to be pushed to the side for a moment.

They were just about to enter when Severus Snape stepped out and said quietly. "Before we get to the meeting...I would like to speak to Potter for a moment in private."

 **A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews and comments they have really helped me flush out some of the characters motives and articulate how they are feeling in the moment. Please let me know what you think :) More action next chapter, I know this one was a little talky**


	10. Unlikely Allies

**Chapter 10: Unlikely Allies**

Lord Voldemort was a patient man. Immortality lent itself to patience after all. He was not simply weak mortal that needed to act quickly lest he lose his opportunity in a set number of fleeting years. No, Lord Voldemort was a being that was above that of mere ordinary humans, such mundane constraints like time meant little to him. Instead he was concerned with perfection and all-consuming power. And the obstacle to both lay in a scrawny little boy who every single one of Death Eaters had agreed had shown no great amount of potential.

Therefore, when he had realized that it would be so much sweeter to have Potter's friends ruin him, to allow the very people that the boy was so determined to save from darkness destroy him in a way that Voldemort and his Death Eaters could never have achieved rather than allow Potter to become a selfless little martyr to their 'noble' cause, he knew that it would take him longer to set his final plans into motions but they would infinitely more successful.

Though none of his Death Eaters were aware of it, his plan had not been born out of pragmatism or even a zeal for vengeance at the idea that Potter would suffer terribly when his friends turned against him. That was, of course, how it had been sold to them- a way to utterly break not only Potter but the entire opposition in the coming war. A way to take their symbol of 'light and goodness' and corrupt it into something unrecognizable. That by making Potter out to be a criminal, any of his soon-to-be-former friends that had supported him would be ashamed of what, or rather _who_ , they had believed in so strongly. Good people were always the easiest to manipulate.

But the truth behind his motivations had been more sinister. Lord Voldemort, who in spite of all that he had become and all that he had accomplished, had never quite shed the identity of the scared orphan boy Tom Riddle that he had once been, was terrified of facing Harry Potter at full strength. For years, he had managed to convince himself that the baby that had torn him from his physical body had been nothing but a fluke. A curse of circumstances. He had miscalculated the power of both prophesy and sacrifice- two things that no human force could contend with no matter how powerful. Lord Voldemort was the most powerful wizard in the world- of that he was quite certain. There had been few other wizards that were born with his raw power and intellect. And _no_ others that had pushed the limits of magic and sheer possibility the way that he had. No mere _child_ could have defeated him- but he had not been fighting against a mere mortal but rather against fate itself. This was easier for him accept, even if it had still been a brutal blow for him to accept that he could still be humbled...even if only by the very forces of magic and the universe itself.

For ten years he comforted himself with the knowledge that it had not been a small boy that had defeated him but magic.

But then Potter had destroyed his possession of Quirrill. He had destroyed his most inventive and prized Horcrux, killing his pet basilisk in the process. Potter had escaped from him and some of his most elite Death Eaters when the boy had been taken completely by surprise. It became increasingly impossible to pass off all of these of things as mere luck...or if they were then whatever universal force was protecting Potter was not to be underestimated.

And then he had possessed Potter….

Lord Voldemort was no stranger to pain. He should have died when the Killing Curse had rebounded but instead had suffered through a hell that no other man had ever endured or could even imagine.

Yet it had paled in comparison to the sheer unrelenting agony of being in Potter's mind. It had been like poison, his very veins burning like fire, his consciousness fraying and struggling against everything that made up who he was. And then, most horrifying of all, for the most fleeting moment...a wish that he would simply die to be rid of the agony. And that was a desire he could not abide. That he would not stand to endure. Lord Voldemort had chased immortality for as long as he could remember and he knew that no other person had come as far as he had. His Horcruxes ensured his survival, he thrived upon the very knowledge that he would never have to experience the failing of death. Potter was his greatest weakness and for that needed to be eliminated at all costs.

Luckily the Ministry had proven to be entirely too accommodating in their ways of destroying Potter for him. After his rebirth Cornelius Fudge had foolishly concentrated his attention on painting Potter as an insane child with delusions of grandeur. He had already conditioned the people to disbelieve the boy. The challenge of course had been convincing Dumbledore's Order and the boy's friends to turn against him but the Aurors had done what they had been trained to do- ensure that people that were arrested were deemed guilty.

Everything had gone according to plan...everything except the fact that the boy had not broken. He had learned from Lucius that Tyson's little training program had shattered the confidence of hardened criminals. That the misery and mental torture of Azkaban had torn apart the strongest of men. And yet the boy had not broken. According to all reports the boy was just as defiant and insolent as ever.

And now he was back with the Order. Back with Dumbledore, a man that unlike all the others was too wise to believe the Ministry blindly. Dumbledore was plotting something and Lord Voldemort had never liked the feeling of Albus Dumbledore of all people looking over his shoulder and coming after him.

"Tyson gave into Dumbledore's demands? The boy was released?" he asked a trembling young Death Eater.

"Ye-yes My Lord. Our sources in the Ministry have confirmed that Tyson is as paranoid about Potter coming to power as Fudge as ever was- probably more so. He fought down Dumbledore's requests for weeks but...the attacks."

The Dark Lord nodded thoughtfully. "As I have said, having Potter in the proper position for when we take control can work to our advantage. From our reports...what was the boy's condition after the death of that little whore?"

A second Death Eater stepped forward and might have been quite surprised to know that the Dark Lord was not sure what his name was. He knew the family name was Farrow, a cousin to the Parkinson's and a Pureblood and he knew that the boy's father was Gregory but this one...was forgettable. Judging from his stumbling gait and poor, self-conscious posture, chances were the boy would be dead inside a year. No one worth getting to know.

"Lucius tells us that killing the girl has done what the interrogations and Dementors could not. The boy is giving up. We believe that he has finally broken."

"You believe...you do bring me facts just hopeful little guesses as to how the boy is faring?" Voldemort asked softly.

The boy was smart enough to tremble, but not smart enough to come up with a better answer. As the young man screamed under the Cruciatus the others scrambled to assure their lord that things were well in hand. "Sir, Malfoy junior assures us that the Order does not trust Potter, that they are using him."

"Using him for what?" the Dark Lord was highly suspicious as to the Order's sudden need for Potter, particularly a short term need. There were few things the boy could do for them inside a week. His best guess was that the old man wanted some of Potter's blood, perhaps to work with a ritual of some kind against him. Dumbledore would know that not only were the two of them linked but that the prophesy tied them together. He would not have suspected Albus Dumbledore of all people to sink to the depths of dark magic required for the rituals involved in coming after him through his blood but Tom Riddle had not become who he had become by believing in the goodness of others. He knew that when pushed far enough, everyone had a breaking point, a point in which they would do anything to achieve their own ends.

"The attacks will continue as scheduled but I agree with Lucius- the strike on Azkaban needs to occur while Potter is out. Not only with Dumbledore's fools be distracted but the Ministry will move against Potter before they are comfortable enough to move against our army. And if they surprise us and attempt to actually go after the source of the problem, they will soon discover how thoroughly we have infiltrated the Ministry itself," Voldemort smiled cruelly.

"I do believe that by the end of week, not only will Phase Two be complete, but we will have completed Phase Three as well."

HPHPHP

Harry glanced up to see the pale visage of his former potions teacher looking at him an inscrutable expression on his face. Harry glanced at Dumbledore's face to see if he could gleam whether or not he might be taking his life into his own hands by going off alone with a man that had hated him for as long as he could remember and that was before the man was under the impression that Harry had sold out his position as a spy to a man that would torture him to death for the mere hint of a betrayal. But there was no hint on the old man's face either- there was no twinkling smile, but no grim line of disappointment either.

"Yes sir," Harry said quietly and he thought that he saw slight shift in the man's eyes but apparently four years had given Harry no new abilities to read a man that had always been a bit of an enigma to him.

They entered a small parlor that Harry could not remember ever seeing before. While the house was marginally in better condition than it had been in when Harry had stayed there the summer before his Fifth Year, this room was clearly unused. It was covered in cobwebs and the lamps were unlit and largely broken, the air was musky and damp. It all reminded Harry why Sirius had been so miserable in this house during the final year of his life.

Harry followed Snape cautiously, always wary of following a wizard with a wand into a confined space with no witnesses- not that witnesses had ever been in a position to help him in the past. He did not think that Snape would attack him in such a way- certainly not to violate him as many of the prisoners and a few of the guards had done over the years, but he could not help the instinctual level of fear that rose within him at the feeling of being trapped with another person. He positioned himself by the door and he could see that his movements, the tension in his muscles, the uneasiness in his expression that he knew he was unable to hide were all being noticed by the observant eyes of the former spy.

There was a moment of silence in which both occupants of the room took the time to size the other up. Harry had not taken much time to look at Snape the previous night as he had been far more concerned about the people that he had considered close friends and even family to worry much about a man that he had alternately hated, feared and struggled to avoid throughout his time at Hogwarts. He could see now that the years had not been kind to Severus Snape- not that they ever had been. Snape was only crossing the threshold of 40, had, in fact, been little over 30 at the time that Harry had first met him as an eleven year old and had been too young to realize just how young thirty actually was in the grand scheme of things.

However, sometime in the past four years Snape had acquired a new jagged scar that ran from his left cheek to his neck. His black, still greasy hair had new streaks of grey. His hands, Harry noticed now, had a yellow tinge on the nails and tendrils of white scars. His eyes, still black and tunnel like, still expressionless and void of all human emotion just as Harry remembered from his childhood years were now ringed with tiredness and age. Harry knew that Snape's safety had been greatly compromised once his position had been revealed but he had also assumed that the man had been safe inside of Hogwarts. It appeared that Harry was not the only person to have lead a complicated past few years.

After nearly a fully minute had passed, "I thought it was past time that the two of us cleared the air," Snape began, his voice low and his eyes staring Harry down.

Harry snorted before he could think better of his reaction. "Clear the air? I think it might be a little late for that at this point. Where would we even start?"

Snape, incredibly inclined his head in acknowledgment of this. "Potter you and I have never seen eye to eye. Our personalities, our very morals are completely at odds with one another and with the history that we share, I doubt there is any possibility of improvement."

Harry bit his tongue before he said what he wanted to say, that it was Snape's fault that they had been no trust between them. That Snape had antagonized him from the very first day that he had met him. However, Snape had extended a civil greeting and Harry did not have an excess of allies at the moment and so instead he said something that had been on his mind for a long time, "you didn't testify at the trial."

Snape paused for just a moment before saying quietly, "I had no proof that you were the one that gave away my position. The only evidence I had was what Draco told me that day. A believe a muggle would call that 'hearsay' and Mr. Malfoy had already given his own statement."

Harry raised his eyebrows, "you were never overly concerned with proof when I was at Hogwarts. I seem to remember you blaming me for everything that went wrong. A cauldron exploded, blame Harry. Fight outside in the corridor, Potter must have started it. Giant expose in the Daily Prophet that was designed to humiliate me, might as well read it out loud for the class to enjoy because I must have loved attention, isn't that right? I wouldn't have thought that you would needed much to convince you that I turned on you."

Snape was staring at him so intensely that Harry half wondered if the man was using leglimency on him without him knowing but he felt nothing but the weight of the man's curiosity. "As a student I always felt that you were one of poor habits. Your work was rushed and lazy. Your attention was never fully on one thing as is needed for delicate potions. Honestly speaking you are not completely unintelligent, but you have limited academic curiosity, by which I mean to say that unless you can see an immediate or even valuable use to a piece of information you have no interest in putting in the effort to learn. And as a person you have other no less terrible faults: your temper was razor thin and only worse as you got older. Your reckless and impatient and fail to give any consideration to things others might know unless you personally like them- even if that advice could be helpful to you.

"However, one thing I always...appreciated about you Potter, was that you were never one to pass the buck. Even in small things. When you needed an ingredient in my class I don't think you ever once asked your partner to get it, instead you would pause whatever you were doing- even when it meant damaging your own work- and went to retrieve yourself. When it came to charging headfirst into danger, you did so with exasperating independence particularly given your age. When it came to unpleasant but unavoidable tasks such as the your illegal entry into the TriWizard Tournament or even your pathetic attempts at Occlumency lessons, you may have grumbled and complained but you never tried to get out of it. Never assumed that if you went to the Headmaster or your Head of House or...any adult, that they would fix the problem for you. So it occurred to me to question...if you truly hated me so much that you wished me dead, would you really have been so cowardly as to simply hand me over to the Dark Lord? Because I think if you wanted me dead, _truly_ wanted me dead...you would have killed me yourself."

Harry blinked, shocked at the man's words. Snape wasn't saying that he didn't believe Harry capable of murder, he was only telling him that he didn't think methods of the crime matched Harry's personality. He was honestly uncertain if he was flattered or insulted. "I never wanted you dead...not really," he admitted as he was fairly certain that he had in fact wished that fate on the man a few times in school.

Snape looked at him, and perhaps he read the truth in his eyes because he once again inclined his head, "In spite of your many faults Potter, I also didn't think that you are a ruthless killer. It is far harder to kill a man then most of those people," Snape gestured with affected disgust in the direction of the door that Harry was standing in front of, "fully realize. Harder still to kill and show no remorse or guilt as you have done."

"You...you think I'm innocent...all this time, why didn't you say anything?"

"It's an unpopular opinion to have and I am unpopular person Potter. My words mean very little."

"Even with the Order? Dumbledore-"

"Dumbledore is a man that has mind decided for himself and very little will change its course. He had kept his own counsel in regards to his thoughts about you and I know nothing of them."

Harry nodded to himself. He too had come to the conclusion that Dumbledore had his own plans for him. Only weeks before Harry's arrest the man had revealed the contents of the prophesy to him, given their treatment towards him, Harry didn't think that the Headmaster had shared those words with anyone else. Which meant that he and Dumbledore were the only two people in the world that knew that according to fate everything would come down to a fight between him and Voldemort- and yet the man had been quick to allow Harry to rot in a prison cell for years without concern. It wasn't that Dumbledore wasn't capable of making mistakes- he had made them with Sirius, he had even made them in the past with Harry, but allowing the boy that could very well be the key to the war wallow in a cell while Voldemort gained traction and the Ministry fell to the likes of Tyson was an extremely passive position for a man that shown himself capable of making the most the subtle of moves.

He looked at Snape once more, noticing the tired stupor of his shoulders, "you've still been trying to get information, haven't you?"

Snape's lips curled, "in a fashion, though I am loath to admit it, my efforts have not usually been particularly effective. My former contacts all have orders to kill me, and my current allies have relegated me more to the position of burden rather than trusted informant."

"Funny how quickly that can happen," Harry commented idly. "The Order very much likes to ask the question 'what have you done for me lately?"

Snape's lip quirked ever so slightly and Harry thought the man might be attempting a smile but the gesture was simply foreign to him, in any case he seemed amused. "Indeed." He dug into his robes and produced two vials, "Azkaban has not done you any favors in terms of health. These will offer at least temporary assistance if not a fix for your current condition."

Harry raised his eyebrows and eyed the vials suspiciously. Snape was capable of the darkest of duplicity, there was no reason not to think that the man had simply led Harry to believe that he was innocent only to slip him something damaging now.

"What are they?"

Snape sneered at him, "Merlin Potter, you are hopeless, did you truly learn nothing? This is a Revitalization Draft and this is a variant of Pepper Up that is designed to give energy to those with chronic conditions rather than simple flus and colds."

Harry titled his head slightly and he could see the colors of potions that he had studied, his memories more clear of Felix's soothing lectures than Snape's uncomfortable and almost terror filled classes. "Thank you," he said simply as he accepted the potions.

"There are more than two sides to this war Potter," Snape continued quietly as Harry finished his potions. "Human beings are incredibly self-interested but they are also scared little sheep. They follow who they think will save them the most grief and offer the best chance at happiness but people like you and I...we know that no one will give you anything in this world Potter. After my position as a spy was revealed, I was not in any position to help you, not that I could even be certain that you were deserving of such help."

"You could have come to see me for yourself."

"And have my name registered with the Ministry as a person that you are still in contact with? I serve no purpose to them now Potter and unlike yourself I am not innocent of my crimes. If I were to raise suspicion on myself the only thing that would have happened is that you and I could have been cellmates- a situation I doubt either one of us would have found comforting."

"And I was under the impression that things couldn't have gotten worse," Harry quipped, humor tinging his voice. As cordial as this conversation was going, Harry and Snape would have destroyed one another had they been forced into the tight quarters of Azkaban.

"So what happens now?"

Snape regarded him quietly for a moment, "you have no reason to help these people Potter, not after they abandoned you, but...as sure as I was that you were innocent of your crimes, I am certain that you are stubborn enough to want to destroy the Dark Lord no matter the personal cost to you. You are...very much your mother's child in that regard."

Harry blinked, he remembered Snape consistently taunting him about his father when he had been at school but he had never heard the man mention his mother, to the best of knowledge the one time he had ever even heard the man refer to her was when he had illegally snuck into the man's pensieve and witnessed a fifteen year old Severus calling his mother a mudblood. They had certainly not appeared to be on friendly terms. Instead of answering, Harry inclined his head to acknowledge the point.

"In that case," Snape said grimly, "I imagine that the two of us attempt to savage the war effort from the Order's Gryffindor inspired idiocy."

HPHPHP

Harry followed Snape back out into the main drawing room where he could see a few of the Order members milling around. He saw Fred and George talking together with Neville who was smiling as though he had been laughing at what they had been saying. Hermione was flicking through some parchment and he rather thought that she was using the few minutes of down time to catch up on some work for her job. Harry wondered idly what she was doing now. When he had last seen her in Fifth Year she had been on a well-intentioned but ultimately unfortunately misunderstood crusade to free House elves. She wondered if her care for all magical creatures had led her into a career at the Ministry to affect change or if that part of her had been snuffed out over the years. He found himself nostalgically hoping that it hadn't been.

Ginny and Draco were standing together rather casually, or rather with affected innocence. Their body language showed they were standing a bit closer than necessary and every so often one of their hands would twitch as though to touch the other and then remembered that others were watching. Harry could imagine her family's reaction to her dating a Malfoy, believed Order member or not. He wondered if they were actually fooling anyone, Harry himself had done enough of covering his relationship with Maggie- and failing- to recognize the signs. He had also seen a couple of same sex couples in prison that also tried to deflect attention from their true orientations- it certainly wasn't a popular sentiment in such an environment. A strange hypocrisy given what ostensibly straight men got up to within its walls.

Tonks had come in and scooped up Teddy, spending a few moments making sure that he was alright and listening raptly as he recounted an exciting tale of spending the whole night away from her and not crying even once even though he was very happy that she was back once again. Harry could see the pure bliss on the woman's face as she spent time with her son and a flare of pain in his chest reminded him of the loss that he and Maggie had suffered. The loss that he would have always known even if their child had survived and Harry would have been unable to play any role in his life. As the others noticed Harry's return to the room their pleasant conversations trickled off and Tonks handed Teddy off to a short, rather excitable man that Harry vaguely remembered meeting at one point but could not recall his name. She was telling both Teddy and Auggie to behave themselves while the meeting took place and Harry could only guess that whoever the man was, he was not much of a fighter if he was missing the meeting for babysitting duties.

Harry stood quietly as the rest of the Order moved into the proper room, not wanting to garner too much attention towards himself. He felt better than he had since Maggie had died, after having a good night's sleep and Snape's potions he felt an energy coursing through him that was an almost completely foreign feeling but did not look forward to the coming stress of addressing the others.

Harry was surprised when Ron raised a hand in a kind of neutral greeting, pointing to a seat that he had saved for Harry next to him by the window, just as he had showed that he had wanted only the previous night. Mrs. Weasley came bustling around offering a few sandwiches to people and Harry was further shocked to find that she had given him an extra with a sad look at his obviously thin, ravaged frame. She couldn't keep the eye contact long and she ducked her head away as though as long as she didn't look at him, she could forget that he was present. Her cooking was a memory that he had fought to keep from the Dementors but one bite proved that he had not succeeded, it was the best thing he could ever remember tasting.

People settled into their chairs and Harry readied himself for battle. Snape's willingness to believe in his innocence had been completely unexpected but the rest of the Order had made their own feelings abundantly clear to him. It did not take long for Harry's suspicions to come true.

"Alright Potter we played your little games, we gave you a night in Sirius' bed after you trashed his memory only weeks after _you_ got him killed, are you ready to finally tell us what information you have or are you going to string us along even longer?" Remus asked with venom in his voice.

There would have been a time when those words would have cut through him like ice. In the days following Sirius' death, Harry had been more than willing to tear himself apart over his role in his godfather's demise, but that had been before he had learned just how well Voldemort could manipulate a person, before he had fully appreciated just how thoroughly the Order had abandoned him to his own devices long before he had been arrested.

He had also had plenty of time to think a few things over that he had been too young, or too naive to consider when he had first learned of his godfather's unlawful imprisonment. At the time he had known what the Ministry had done was wrong but he had been so concerned with the corruption of their government that he had not even fully realized how utterly the Order had failed for one of their own. They had done nothing for Sirius and now wanted to lay the blame for his death at Harry's feet.

Needless to say, Harry saw red.

"Don't you dare talk to me about Sirius! You didn't give a damn about him for 12 years! He was supposedly your best friend and you never even came to listen to his side of the story! Not _once_ in _twelve fucking years_ did you ever stop to think about the fact that Sirius **never** would have betrayed my dad. So don't stand here now and act like you _ever_ cared about Sirius."

"Sirius was **MY** FRIEND," Remus yelled out. "The only peace I have at night is that he never had a chance to see the type of person you really are. Sirius believed in you when no one else did, Harry."

"Remus," Ron along with Fred and George started as though to quell the man but several other people were nodding right alongside him.

"And trust me," Remus continued relentlessly, "there were a lot of people that tried to tell him that he was wrong to believe in you so strongly but he never doubted you for a second. Over and over again he tried to convince us to tell you more _, trust_ you more and how do you repay his faith in you? You trick him into trying to save your worthless ass from a threat that never even existed in the first place!"

"Is it supposed to surprise me that you never listened to a damn thing Sirius had to say? _All_ of you ignored him, you locked him up in this house that he hated and you made him feel like he was worthless all because none of you could be bothered to do a damn thing about the fact that you had already failed him. He was in prison for years but did one of you fight for a trial?" Harry gestured to the room at large here and he could see a mixture of indignation and reluctant guilt, particularly on the faces of the older members. "Sirius fought for you, he turned against his _own_ _family_ to help you and you all let him rot. Don't sit there and act like you cared Remus because you and I both know that you've never cared about anyone but yourself!"

"You ungrateful little liar! After everything…" Remus seemed unable to fully articulate how angry he was at the moment but Harry was happy to note that he had struck a chord with the man. He was not about to stand there and accept the blame for his failures. "You have no idea how hard things were at the time but we tried to give you every chance, Harry. I know mistakes were made but we tried our best, the way your parents wanted and you threw it back in their faces. James and Lily must be rolling in their graves."

"You tried your best?" Harry asked scathingly. "I never even met you until I was 13 and even then if I remember it correctly you told me you knew my dad by mistake. Don't go and rewrite history that we were both there for."

"Harry, you're not being fair. Remus couldn't have..." Hermione tried to reason but Harry was not about to listen to their excuses any longer.

"Remus couldn't what? Write a fucking letter? Apparate down the street and check on me? You all want to have it both ways. You're all so sorry that the Dursleys were abusive monsters but you never did a damn thing to stop them. No it was _my_ fault for not stopping them. You all love to sprout off at the hip about how I need to take responsibility for my actions but have any one of you ever taken responsibility for a single thing in your lives? You allowed Sirius to suffer for years because you were all too busy moving on from the war to even bother cleaning things up properly after a baby finished what you couldn't."

"No one ever said you were responsible for stopping them Harry but you're expecting too much from us," Charlie spoke up with the tone of someone trying to be reasonable with a person that acting hysterical. "We couldn't fix what we didn't know was broken. None of us had any idea that Dursleys were abusing you."

Harry was about to argue when Ron unexpectedly spoke up, "that's not true Charlie, everyone here knew that the Dursleys treated Harry like crap. We might not have known all of it but...I reckon we should have known enough." The redhead turned to his parents and Dumbledore as he said, "I reckon they knew enough to know that a 15 year old kid shouldn't have been in that house."

"That doesn't excuse-" Ginny began heatedly.

"Not saying it does," Ron answered quickly, "but Harry's right about taking responsibility for things and the truth is you lot- we- left him to burn. You all assumed that Harry could handle whatever happened." Ron turned to Lupin as he said, "Harry told me once in Third Year that he couldn't do the Patronus because he didn't have enough happy memories, that he couldn't use anything from his childhood. You spent hours every week working with him, talking with him. You must have figured out that things weren't right with his relatives, you should have done something." Harry was stunned by Ron's defense of him, limited though it might be. Ron obviously still thought him guilty but was at least willing to admit that the Order had been at fault when it came to his relatives.

There was a beat of silence but old habits died hard and most weren't ready to admit that they had failed in their duty to the boy that had once been their savior. Tonks was the next to speak up, Remus is a werewolf, he couldn't have gotten custody of Harry."

"Custody?" Harry scoffed, "Who said I expected custody? But I think I simple birthday card might have been nice. A visit every three or four years wouldn't have been too much of a struggle. You did nothing for me just like you did nothing for Sirius and it was Sirius suffered the most. He suffered in ways you can't even imagine and he was innocent the whole time!"

"That's right Harry Sirius was innocent unlike you and I wish that the Dementors were still at Azkaban full time, that way you could suffer the way that Sirius did all those years. You have it too easy!"

"That's enough," Daniel interjected firmly and Harry knew that what went on in the prison was an uncomfortable topic for the man who had joined law enforcement out of an actual genuine motive to help people. "Remus, you know that I have no problem with you mate, but you're talking about things you really don't understand."

"We all know that Dementors aren't even a fourth of the population that used to be there and that he got sentenced as a minor so that he's only in _medium_ security," Ginny said bitterly. "He should have been sentenced as an adult. He knew what he was doing. He knew what it meant to sign up with You-Know-Who!"

"I agree with Daniel," Dumbledore said calmly, "that is enough. For the moment at least we are all on the same side, it does us no good to drag up the past and to concentrate only on our own bitterness. Harry I believe that you said that you had information about Voldemort's imminent attack, do you still wish to tell us?"

Harry was white with anger at the nerve of Lupin. For a moment Harry reconsidered telling them anything at all. He had told himself that he owed these people nothing. Why should he provide them with information that they should have been able to acquire themselves if they had an actual spy rather than a turncoat? But then he caught sight of Daniel, who he had promised Maggie that he would do his best to protect. He thought about the fact that by not telling them...in a way he was letting them win in the end. It would feel- it him at least- like he was allowing them to prove that they had been right about him, that he was selfish and not committed to helping bring down Voldemort. If there was one thing that Harry had taught himself over the past few years it was that no one could take away your will to do what you felt was right. They could taunt you, curse you, and humiliate you, they could strip you of your dignity but not yourself self-respect and they couldn't break you unless you allowed it.

Breathing heavily through his nose in an attempt to cool his temper, he saw from the looks on many of their faces that most people in the room expected him to hold back whatever he was going to say as well. Or maybe they all believed that he had lied the night before and had nothing to say. His eyes finally landed on Draco Malfoy, and his mouth spread into a cruel smile. He had just remembered that there was another reason to tell them what he knew, there was always revenge.

"Fuck it, I might hate the Order but I hate Malfoy more- whatever attack Voldemort's planning in Hogsmeade is just a diversion, he's actually planning a massive breakout of Azkaban prison."

There was instant pandemonium at the table, yells of contention, and screamed questions in Harry's direction. Malfoy's vehement denials. Harry couldn't help a small smirk from appearing on his face, here they were the legendary Order of the Phoenix and they were all blind to the truth. The truth that had been staring at them in the face for years and lying to them.

"Why would you of all people tell us about a breakout of Azkaban and expect us to believe you?" Mad-Eye asked skeptically.

Harry gave them a steady look, once again he had committed himself to a path and he was going to see it through. They needed to believe him because he knew Voldemort and after all this time he knew Lucius as well and Harry was certain that whatever timetable they had been working on they would have sped up their plans now that Harry was out in the world. They would never trust him but they might trust in his self-interest. "Ginny said it herself, I'm in medium security- the breakout is targeted to hit the high security cells. I wouldn't be one of the people that he was after on a short time line of a breakout. The Death Eaters would leave me to rot so I have no benefit in not telling you."

"So we're expected to believe that Voldemort is taking the trouble of setting up a massive diversion in order to stage a breakout but he won't go down a floor to get his prized Death Eater?" Ron asked, unable to keep the sardonic tone out of his voice. Harry internally sighed, Ron might have defended him about the lack of help that he had received as a kid but he still considered him a Death Eater at heart.

"Prized am I?" Harry asked sarcastically. "You'd think if I were that important Voldemort would have come around a lot sooner, don't you think?"

"How are you so certain of this information?" Dumbledore asked, his unshakable calm still intact though his eyes had uncharacteristically narrowed.

Harry shrugged, "right now it's fairly common knowledge around anyone in high security."

"So how would you know about it?" Neville asked with his brow raised, obviously under the impression that he had tripped Harry up with by throwing his own words back in his face.

Harry gave him withering glare and watched as his former classmate seemed to shrink slightly in on himself, suddenly reminding Harry of the shy boy that he had met as an even smaller First Year. While for many this might have brought on a feeling of nostalgia or even sympathy for the other man, for Harry it only reinforced the fact that the people that he had trusted the most had let him down. He had always gone out of his way to protect Neville. He had even felt a kind of kindred spirit with the often clumsy, rather over-weight boy that had been usually last in their class to complete a spell. He had defended Neville against Malfoy, tried to boost his confidence over the years and had felt that they had been real friends. The fact that Neville could not so much as look at him without suspicion and disappointment was like a slap in the face to him and every time he had tried to help Neville when they were kids.

But he couldn't worry about that at the moment. Instead he stuck to facts, keeping his tone as level as possible he explained, "After Tyson started the reclassification of certain prisoners to 'enemies of the state' the treatment of prisoners became the same regardless of what level of imprisonment they were originally given. I spend most of my time with the high security level offenders- except of course when we're in our cells at night. And that's when they'll attack. In between the second and third shift change when they reverse direction and the Eastern Wing is given a 13 minute window where there are virtually no patrols."

Tonks gave a startled movement, "how do you know that?"

Harry sighed, "It's not that hard to figure out after a while. No one wants to get caught out by a guard so just about everyone learns where they'll be pretty fast. As for how I know the plan, messages get passed pretty easily if you know how to do it, right Draco?" he added pointedly.

"Draco is on OUR side, Potter," Ginny declared stoutly, eyes flashing possessively, her hand going to his left knee, rather closer to his thigh than an innocent touch would have necessitated. "I _cannot_ believe that you're actually going to sit there and accuse him. All those years you always made it out like he was the one that instigated all of those fights but…it was you, wasn't it? You all along. You were never the person that you pretended to be but you can't fool us anymore."

Harry turned to Ginny and for the first time he felt genuine hurt at something one of them had said to him, "you _really_ believe that?" he asked her quietly. "After _everything_ we've been through, you're really going to rewrite our _entire_ history Gin. I knew that you thought that I became a traitor and tortured the Dursleys and you even think I killed Mrs. Figg when I had no reason to, but I didn't think that you would have changed everything I ever did before that into a crime. I was bitten by a _basilisk_ trying to save you Ginny but you really think that I was nothing but evil the _whole_ time?"

Ginny had real tears in her eyes when she looked at him and he knew in that moment that she had spent years convincing herself of that very thought. Ginny had always seen the world in a stark contrast of black and white- good and bad. There was no room in her worldview for the idea that Harry could have saved her life and ended another's. The fact that Harry had killed no one was less relevant to him in the moment than the fact that she could cast everything else he had done in his life aside for the perceived worst thing. Even if Harry had tortured the Dursleys, he had least been given good motive. When he had become this monster in their eyes?

"I don't know Harry, I really don't. I trusted you, I believed in you….I loved you more than anything in the world but…I never knew you, did I? Not really. What I do know is that _Draco_ was open with me. He told me what it was like growing up in that house with his father and his crazy mother. Being forced into thinking a certain way. He was honest with me, no matter how terrible it was or how awful it made him sound. Draco has worked so hard to change into someone better even when he had every reason to follow his parents and I respect that about him."

Harry looked at her and strangely all he could feel was pity. "You're a fool, Ginny. You never loved me, you said it yourself, you didn't even know me. And you don't know him. Lucius Malfoy's been passing him information for years. He knows everything about the raid, he's not a spy for the Order, he's a spy for Voldemort. Draco has always done everything that he has wanted to do."

"That's a lie!" Ginny insisted while Draco shot Harry a smug look, one that showed that he was confident that the Order would continue to believe exactly what he told them to believe.

"Don't give him the satisfaction of thinking that we're even listening to his lies Ginny, we all know that that it was Draco that told us about Severus' position being compromised," Remus spoke up as though to comfort her.

All eyes turned to Snape, who stared back at them evenly. "I've expressed my views in the past that delivering a piece of valuable information does not make one expressly trustworthy."

"We've said the same thing," the twins were quick to point out and Harry glanced quickly at the boys that he had once given his TriWizard Tournament winnings to. Fred and George had always been smarter than people had given them credit for, but in the same token were usually never taken seriously when they should be. He wondered if their business had ever taken off.

"Draco has given us a lot of information over the years, and he was under a lot of suspicion when he changed sides. He passed every single test we gave him," Hestia Jones followed up.

"He's just trying to get us to turn on each other instead of knowing where the real threat is- right in front of us!" Remus spat.

"I didn't have to try too hard for you to turn on your own son, you bastard!" Harry spat, eyes flashing with anger.

Remus stood up quickly and lunged at Harry, who never so much as flinched at the werewolf's fist as it was aimed squarely for his head- before being deftly intercepted by Fred and George who were straining to keep the enraged man back.

"We should probably let him hit you for that one, you know," Fred said mildly, no humor on his face for a change.

"Yeah that was bang out of order there," George agreed.

"Just because everyone else around here feels that abandoning your wife and child when they need you is perfectly fine doesn't make it right!" Harry threw back, his hoarse voice raised in the closest thing to a shout that he could manage. While he had taken all of their insults and suspicion in stride, that didn't stop him from being absolutely furious with Remus for choosing to run away from his responsibilities with Tonks and Teddy. The man had once abandoned him to the Dursleys without a second thought, but in spite of what he had said in the meeting Harry could not entirely blame the man. Unlike Sirius, Remus was not his godfather. Remus had never claimed any special relationship to him, nor was he meant to have. He had merely been a school friend of his parents, a role most people grew out by their mid-twenties if not sooner. Harry knew that Remus owed nothing to the son of his former friends even if the man often seemed to think that he had done right by his murdered friends when in truth he had never sought to be a part of his life but he would be damned if he allowed the man to convince himself and others that he was free to abandon his own son. He would be damned if he let Remus take for granted something that Harry wanted more than anything. "You like to hold yourself up as some kind of paragon of virtue but you won't even own your own mistakes! Do you even realize what I would give to…"

"HARRY!" Daniel finally yelled out. "Do you really want to get into this now?" he asked with a significant tone and suddenly a bit of rationality forced its way back into Harry's brain. He shook his head silently, his jaw clenched tightly lest he say anything further he would regret. He could feel the curious eyes of the other Order members on him and he knew they were all wondering why Daniel had interjected precisely when he had.

"Why don't you tell us about the information that you claim to have," Daniel continued in that calm voice that Maggie had once told him had always made her feel better before big tests. "You told me once that I could trust you, I've always wanted to believe that- so give me a reason to," he man added quietly.

The room had grown silent, all eyes were on Harry, who was breathing as though he had just run a marathon. His hands were actually trembling with the effort it took to reign himself in but he took a deep breath and pulled himself together. "Don't think I'm doing this just for you Myers, but you have a point. I came here for a reason," he said quietly, trying remind himself, in spite of the potion he had been given, Harry mind was tired- just as it always was these days. Concentrating on a single thing was difficult and emotions battled within him, swaying from one extreme to the next. He needed to stay strong.

"Alright so let me ask you all this much, why do you think so many of your raids have suddenly become so successful? Fourteen Death Eaters were arrested yesterday, right? Let me guess, there were only muggle causalities so they weren't hurting anyone with the ability to fight backand once proper wizards arrived the group wasn't particularly hard to capture when it was all said and done, which means there was no chance of lethal force being used in a take down, right? All of those arrested are expected to be branded as 'enemies of the state' and given the now mandatory life sentence?"

There were several puzzled looks around the table. "You're not honestly suggesting that it was a staged capture just to get more people on the inside?" Kingsley asked. "Why would Voldemort bother with that?"

Harry shook his head, feeling thoroughly disgusted at the job that they had been doing. But it was actually Snape who answered, who tone rather scathing. "You mean apart from the fact that once the breakout occurs it will be easier with more people on the inside to help take out the Aurors? I would assume that much would be obvious to you."

Shacklebolt flushed slightly, a difficult feat given his dark skin tone but seemed to concede the point. "You've made your position on the raids clear Severus...I admit that none of us wanted to take your caution seriously. But I take it there is another reason?" he asked, addressing his question towards Harry.

Harry nodded, "Voldemort has been wanting more and more Death Eaters to be captured. In the past year alone nearly over a hundred have all been sent to Azkaban, isn't that right? All small scale riots, all nobody recruits. Voldemort's actually convinced you all that you're winning and you never even realized that he was getting what he wanted from you all along- he has scores of them learning everything they need to win the war directly from the Aurors themselves. He has all of their strategies, all of their plans and is getting ready to use them against you all."

This was met with a shocked silence. Harry saw a few people glance at Tonks and Kingsley, clearly wondering how prisoners were expected to pick up any of this. But the answer came from Daniel, who spoke low and under his breath as horrified realization stole over his face, "The Auror Training Program."

Harry nodded grimly, "Death Eater's might be evil scum but no one ever said that they were stupid."

"Excuse me," Hermione said stiffly, apparently she had finally had enough of Harry's vague words and empty explanations. Harry nearly grinned, Hermione had always hated not knowing what other people were talking about. "What is this Auror Training Program? You keep making these vague references to it like we should know about it- are you ever planning on telling us what any of it actually entails? Or why the prisoners in Azkaban seem to know so much about it?"

"Are you sure Hermione? I wouldn't want the former Founder of S.P.E.W. to have the image of her hero crushed," Harry couldn't help but mock her.

Hermione blinked in surprise. "What are you talking about?"

Daniel sighed, looking terribly resigned, "He's talking about Tyson, and some of his more….creative war policies. Aurors are forbidden to talk about it but…prisoners outside of the prison itself…" he shot a significant look at Harry.

"You asked how the inmates of Azkaban know about the Training Program?" Harry asked, his voice carefully controlled. "We _are_ the training program, Hermione. Tyson rebranded everyone with a life sentence as 'Enemies of the State' and then allowed all Third Year candidates to practice any and all curses on us."

There were several shaking heads and a chorus of denials was heard around the table. "That's…that's not legal," Hermione said softly.

Harry laughed hollowly, "Tyson is the law, Hermione! Don't you remember Umbridge and her ridiculous Ministry decrees Fifth Year- the Ministry can do whatever it wants! And they were using prisoners with Life Sentences so that no one would find out about it."

"What do you mean by curses?" Neville asked softly.

Harry's fists closed on the table but his voice was steady. "I meant what I said- any and all curses. We're used in interrogation classes, demonstrations on captures, dueling (which I don't understand because we're not given a wand to actually defend ourselves so it's hardly a duel). Anything from cutting curses to the Imperious Curse or the Cruciatus Curse."

"They…they actually use the Cruciatus on you?" Neville asked in a shaky voice, obviously thinking of his own parents' experience with the Unforgivable.

"Well there is a set time limit on that one or they consider it inhumane," Harry added with a sardonic little shrug. "Point is, they conduct all their Third Year courses in full view of prisoners- complete with examples and references to their formations, plans, and strategies. I could probably qualify as a full Auror tomorrow if anyone gave me a wand and told me to take the test. They go over everything. For the most part it doesn't matter- between the Dementors and daily torture most of the prisoners are just as crazy as you might expect, the Ministry knows it so they don't worry too much about what they say. Or at least that was the case until the past year when suddenly dozens of new prisoners were coming and were strong enough to take in everything that was being said and done. They never expected anyone to actually leave, it's the reason Enemies of the State are given a _mandatory_ life sentence, so there would be nothing for them to report anyway.

"In the beginning with the new security measures I reckon that Voldemort really couldn't risk another massive breakout. Since the Ministry actually listened to Dumbledore for a change and used more than just the Dementors, they weren't strong enough to launch a full out assault. Voldemort's been building slowly for years, waiting for a moment to strike from within. I don't know for sure but the rumor is that he wants to ensure as many Purebloods survive his ultimate takedown as possible. He's trying to establish a New World order after all and with a limited number of purebloods to work with, he wants to be seen as their savior."

Mad-Eye nodded, "That part would explain his hesitancy. We've been expecting larger scale plans, instead the Inner Circle has been hard to pin down at all."

"But he hasn't had the chance to launch anything big- Tyson's shut every move of his down," Neville argued.

"Tyson's been successful," Kingsley conceded softly but it was clear that he was leaning in Moody's direction. " But he's also never fought against a full out assault. This 'war' has been much easier than we could have anticipated. Every so often Voldemort launches an attack to let us know that he's still around and still a threat but ultimately… well I've wondered for a long time why he hasn't hit harder."

Harry nodded, "Exactly. Never let it be said Voldemort lacks patience, and why shouldn't he? He's supposedly immortal, right? Why rush?"

This was met with angry protests and cries that Harry was wrong in thinking that his 'master' was immortal. "It really doesn't matter what I believe, the point is Voldemort believes it and that's where his plans are coming from. Going back to my original point, at first he was leaving the Death Eaters in prison because he lacked the resources for a massive breakout but then, Lucius Malfoy had the brilliant idea of sending in new blood. Getting enough people arrested for a long enough period of time that they would be able to pick up what the Aurors are doing and learn as much as they can- and the breaking them out before they lost their minds, taking with them as many former Death Eaters as possible. Not all of them are completely mad after all- at least not by Voldemort standards of course, by normal human standards they're completely cracked."

"The Ministry….has been torturing prisoners….for practice?" Molly Weasley asked, her voice shaking.

Harry's stern face dropped for a moment as he looked at the woman that had once cared for him like a mother. The only woman that had ever offered him comfort or a place in a family, he felt oddly guilty for having to relay this information to her. He could still remember the woman manically insisting that he and her own children were too young and innocent to even hear about the war, the idea of her own side of the war being involved in such sorted business must have destroyed her.

"Tyson knew that the Aurors weren't getting enough practical experience. This was his way of fixing that," he explained more quietly.

Dumbledore's face was troubled with this information. "Daniel can you collaborate Mr. Potter's claims?"

Daniel nodded, "I didn't like it, hated it actually…but it's mandatory for all new recruits now. And Potter's right about full classes being conducted in front of prisoners too- our Instructors never really…gave them much thought," he said with a frown on his face, as though just now realizing that these men and women were thinking human beings with the ability to reason for themselves, despite being caged and tortured.

"No bills were ever brought before the Wizengamot concerning such treatment. It appears that Tyson has been make some unilateral decisions without the knowledge of the wizarding world," Dumbledore told them thoughtfully.

Hermione glanced and Harry could see that through her initial shock and disgust there was an old calculating glint to her eyes. "You said that Lucius Malfoy had the idea of getting more recruits arrested so that fresh people could study the techniques the Aurors were using, but who was studying them initially."

Harry frowned but was prevented from having to come up with an answer by Daniel who seemed to scoff at the answer. "Come on Hermione, if Harry is your friend you must know that answer."

Harry glanced at the other man in surprise, having not realize that the other man had caught on what he had been doing. Daniel shrugged, "if I think about what I know now with what I saw then...a lot more makes sense."

"What makes sense?" Bill Weasley asked.

Harry sighed, knowing precisely how this would make him sound even if it was the truth. "It was my idea...at first. I always studied what the Aurors were doing during the classes and I was the one that said that once you learn what they do...you can learn ways around them..."

The conversation at the table was interrupted by the appearance of a patronus- it was a fox and spoke with a voice that Harry did not recognize but was clearly surrounded by a large crowd of people judging from the background noise. "Parade style attack at the Ministry. Several officials appear to be under the Imperious Curse, appears wide spread early on- proceed with caution."

There was a massive movement as everyone rose as one to their feet, readying themselves for action. "We must go but remember the warning, Voldemort is using innocent people in an effort to get us to fight one another. Aim to capture, not kill if possible," Dumbledore reminded them.

"What about Potter? We can't leave him in the house alone," Mad-Eye pointed out.

"I'll stay behind," Malfoy offered with a bit of a grin. "The same charms are on the house and he has the restraints on, he won't be going anywhere."

This was rapidly agreed to with disappointing promptness. Despite Harry's earilier warnings about the younger Malfoy no one seemed at all concerned about leaving him alone in a house with his former rival, all of them too concerned with getting to the actual fighting. Harry knew enough from his visions and his information around the prison to know that Voldemort had launched similar attacks before and tended to strike fast and hard. Time was clearly of the essence. Harry knew that Voldemort's main goal with these kind of public attacks was spreading fear among the people.

Knowing when he had no chance of winning an argument, Harry did not protest Malfoy being left to mind him like a naughty child. The same restrictions were on the house, but the Order seemed to be the under the impression that Harry was more ignorant of circumstances than they would have liked. He was not going to disabuse them of the idea that he was far from Draco's helpless victim within the confines of Grimmauld Place.

The Order was quick to apparate out and Harry's scar burned with a combination of vicious pain and cruel pleasure that came from another, allowing Harry to know before any of the Order had even arrived that unlike their recent battles, this would be far from an easy victory for them. Harry had a strong feeling that not all of them would be returning.

 **A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews.**


	11. The Enemy You Thought You Knew

**Chapter 11: The Enemy You Thought You Knew**

Neville Longbottom apparated to the nearest entrance to the Ministry of Magic and went through the security gate as quickly as possible. He was met with a familiar sight. A motivation rally gone wrong. Almost three years ago the Minister of Magic had started a new campaign throughout the entire Wizarding World-it was simply called "We are the Ministry, We Are Proud." With the war escalating daily and people living in constant fear Tyson knew that the greatest defense against someone like Voldemort was hope. Strength in their combined unity would see them through.

Fliers had been sent out containing all of the victories that the Aurors had accomplished. Weekly talks on the Wireless to keep people informed and prevent panic. But the most important addition- and the most popular- were the pride parades. Hundreds of Ministry workers and their families would turn out to support their freestanding government and stand strong against Voldemort. They would march, yell, play music, even dance. The first one had taken place just before Neville's seventh year and he remembered it as being one of the first times since the return of Voldemort when he had felt truly confident that things would be alright after all. That the Ministry would win…even without Harry.

Unfortunately, in the past year Voldemort had turned the campaign against them. Using masked Death Eaters and the Imperious Curse he created his own parade- of terror. As of yet the Death Eaters had not been effective enough to cause a real threat. They had attacked three parades and in all of them there had not been a single fatality. The recruits that were working for the Dark Lord were not strong duelists and broke easily against a counterassault. Ron had once commented that the parade attacks were the easiest way to capture new Death Eaters for Azkaban. It had been a rather cold statement but one that Neville had privately agreed with.

However, as Neville took in the sight in front of him he immediately saw that things were very different than the past attacks. There were very few recruits present and instead the seasoned fighters that had not made an appearance in quite some time had shown up in mass. Worse still they were clearly using the Imperious Curse on innocent victims and causing them to attack Aurors or even other bystanders creating mass chaos.

"Stupify!" Neville shouted only to have the spell meet a perfectly reflected shield. Auror quality. He observed vaguely. The fight was growing intense. Green bursts of light were echoing from all directions and Neville's breath caught in this throat as he saw bodies collapse to the ground as though its strings had been cut. He had not been in a battle in which the Death Eaters had blatantly aimed not to kill in a very long time. It had been something he questioned, why the 'Dark Lord' seemed to be so reluctant to use lethal force but Dumbledore had felt that for the moment Voldemort's goals had been more intricate. While he built his base he was trying to destroy their enemy but instead was seeking to intimidate them and convince people that Voldemort had more followers than he did. He wanted it to appear that all Purebloods and Half-Bloods supported him.

This was different. The fight had escalated quickly and soon Order members and Aurors alike were firing off cutting curses and blasting spells in all directions. Forced into defending themselves with equal fervor and violence. The room was covered in a dusty smoke from collapsed walls and statues, Neville's feet tripped slightly over the fallen bodies that were now littering the ground. He could hear shouts around him- Ginny, Fred and George screaming out into the night, only their fiery red hair visible through the fog of battle.

Ron and Hermione could be seen fighting back to back, moving around each other in an almost fluid dance as they battled five Death Eaters between the two of them. Neville blinked in surprise, he had not seen the two of them fight together in a long time and had he been asked he would have been forced to confess that he did not think that they were particularly strong duelists. Or at the very least not well practiced as a team but there they stood, strongly united as their wands slashed brutally through the air, their feet moving deftly to avoid any curses.

A sharp pain cut through his left arm and Neville cursed himself for his moment of distraction as he ducked low to see the damage. Not too bad, he had been turning at the time, so the spell had just glanced off his upper arm. He was bleeding, but not badly. And his wand arm was still good.

It was a long fight. He could not remember seeing attacks this vicious and Neville knew in that moment that Harry had been telling the truth in regards to the Death Eaters lulling them into a false sense of security, he had not been remotely prepared for such savage barbarism. Kinsley Shacklebolt fell trying to protect Tonks and the family of four that she was struggling to defend. Emmeline Vance was lying deathly still in a pool of her own pool. Moody was screaming with nearly hysteric mania as he cut down three and four opponents at a time, the ground around him wet and sticky. Neville thought that he would go to his grave hearing the cries of the seven year old that had watched their mother bleed to death in front of her eyes. He would have nightmares of the look in the young father's eyes that had been tortured in front of his family just to protect them from the same fate for as long as possible.

Remus was fighting Dolohov but didn't seem to be faring well. One of the older Order members had mentioned coldly but with blunt casualness that of the Marauder Group that had joined the Order to have Remus as their only surviving member would not have been their first choice. " _Good enough I suppose, and better than some- Pettigrew in particular. But Potter and Black in their prime were something else. Few people could fight against the two of them together in a battle."_ The Order was falling under the superior ability of the Death Eaters.

But of course none of that mattered when Albus Dumbledore was there. Magnificent in lavender robes and a sight for all to behold as he made the very building itself fight against the attackers.

He staggered under another cutting hex but thankfully another curse brought the man down before he could strike again. "It's ending," George panted next to him. "You alright mate? That cut looks nasty."

"It's alright," Neville said through his gritted teeth.

"That was... a bit more than I expected, really upped their game recently haven't they?" George wondered speculatively.

Neville nodded. "They certainly seemed prepared. Is Fred alright? Where did he go?"

George nodded, "he got hit in the leg, Tonks is fixing him up, and you know that Tonks takes forever with Healing charms so it'll be awhile. Have you seen Charlie? I lost track of him but last I saw he was really in the thick of it."

Neville shook his head, looking around as best as he could for Charlie's shoulder-length hair, his broad stature that normally dominated any room he was in. "Sorry," he coughed out, sliding down a wall when he realized that he was too tired to walk much further.

"Easy mate, I think you lost a bit more blood than you realized there," George said sympathetically, running his wand over the injury and conjuring bandages to staunch what he could while they waited for the Healers that were just now arriving to deal with the more serious injuries first.

"Oh look who it is, just in time as usual. Our esteemed Minister of Magic," George muttered quietly.

The twins were a few of the only people that Neville knew that had not been thrilled with the decisions the government had been making the last few years. Tyson had come into office just after Neville had started his Sixth Year. After a year of Fudge's incompetency the Wizarding World had needed a strong and decisive leader- they had found that in Ivan Tyson. A rather small man but with a loud personality, at first glance Ivan Tyson was not what most people considered to be their idea of a powerful leader. Instead he had this approachable likability that the people fell in love with. He had made swift and grand changes as soon as he had come into office and had been met with surprising approval from many different political groups. Most witches and wizards agreed that it was his skills as a leader that had saved them from falling under the Voldemort's regime. Neville found in him a somewhat kindred spirit, a man that was not expected for greatness but tried to do right by the people.

Tyson was shaking hands with many of injured civilians. Comforting families and friends of people that had either been hurt by the Death Eaters or enchanted to work for them. He was calm, he was understanding and Neville felt himself relax as the higher authority came to ease the latest burden from him.

"You never were a fan of Tyson, were you?" Neville asked with curiosity. "I've always kind of wondered what you and Fred had against him but…" he shrugged, "it never really seemed that important before. I liked him, he's always done a good job. But the two of you never seemed to like him, why is that?"

George was still looking at Tyson, who was listening to one of his top Aurors brief him on some of the events of the attack before speaking. "No we don't like him. It's not anything that he did... or that he didn't do. Honestly, we've always liked him more than Fudge but…" George frowned as though trying to decide how best to phrase his thoughts. "There was just always something that seemed…off about him. Does that make sense? Like he was trying too hard to give us this perfect image of himself because he didn't want us to look for the real image."

"No one is perfect though," Neville pointed out fairly.

"True," George conceded, "but he also has this way of making things about himself. 'We are the Ministry, We are Proud,' it's a good thought, don't get me wrong- except that Tyson always meant that HE is the Ministry and I always got the impression that he wanted everyone to be proud of _him_."

Neville was quiet for a moment, letting the thought sink in. Neville knew that his greatest problem was the fact that deep down he was a follower- not of You-Know-Who, but of powerful wizards that he convinced himself that he could trust. Harry had been the first one. Even at age eleven Neville had looked up to the boy. The Boy-Who-Lived, a legend even before Neville had met him, sharing a dorm and sleeping two beds away from a boy that he had heard stories about his whole life had been a surreal experience for him. But more than that was that Harry had always lived up to his mystic. It had been Harry that had defended Neville even as a First Year. Harry that helped him in Defense and encouraged him to do better, that had believed that he was capable of doing better. Harry was a day younger than Neville and yet had seemed as though he was much older. A protector. And then Neville had looked up to Dumbledore- the powerful Headmaster that had always seemed to have the answers. And then Tyson- except slowly but surely most of his ideas about these people had been stripped away. Should he continue to trust Tyson, or was the man all smoke and mirrors? If he saw through the mirage would it because of the right reasons or only because Harry and the twins had pointed it out to him.

Neville asked his most pressing concern to the uncharacteristically serious George. "What do you think about what Harry told us? Do you really think that Voldemort is planning a massive breakout at Azkaban and that Harry is just handing over that information out of the goodness of his heart?"

"No way in hell!" Ginny interrupted them with her own answer as she came up behind them with Ron and Hermione in tow. "I trusted Harry once and it was the biggest mistake of my life- _never_ again."

"Harry might have betrayed us once but that doesn't mean that he's lying now," Hermione pointed out.

Ron bobbed his head slightly from side to side as though trying to decide which side he wanted to land on, "it sounded like the truth. It was an awful lot to make up. And I don't doubt for a minute that if Lucius Malfoy was planning to escape than Draco would be in on it. I've haven't trusted that ferret since Day One."

"We know," Ginny snapped. "But honestly Ron can't you let this ridiculous rivalry you have with Draco go? He has proven to us over and over again that he's on our side. Dumbledore trusts him. _**I**_ trust him."

"You're in love with him, there's a difference. You trust Malfoy because he broke down and supposedly told you all his deep dark secrets, that doesn't mean that he doesn't have more," Ron argued.

"At least he was open and honest with me, unlike Harry. He _never_ told us what the Dursleys were doing. He hid it all away until it destroyed him. Harry wasn't strong enough to let anyone in- Draco is different. He cares about people- about _me_ Ron."

"Harry not tell you about the Dursleys doesn't make him weak Gin. You seem to forget all the time that Harry was never with you. You were the one that kept claiming that you were in love with him, not the other way around. He never owed you an explanation on his life!" Ron shouted, typical temper flaring.

Ginny's face turned a deep tomato red and she looked ready to curse Ron into oblivion. "He never told you either! He claimed that he was your best friend, why did he need to keep so many secrets?"

"I think the better question to that Gin," Fred said, his voice unusually grim as he finally limped over to where they were, grimacing slightly in pain. "Is why he ever had to explain to us in the first place. We all knew that those muggles were no good. Mum and Dad would talk about it all the time. Hell, the three of us had to pry bars of his windows," he gestured to his twin and Ron. "We knew, we didn't do a damn thing. I personally I'm tired of having this damn fight with you over and over again." Ginny scowled but unlike with Ron she had a harder time fighting with the twins. She had idolized the pranksters as a child and disliked going against their unconventional thoughts on most things. It occurred to Neville that he had rarely if ever heard them discuss Harry before and he could only assume that the Weasleys had established some sort of moratorium on 'Potter talk' at some point in the past.

"What do you two think about Harry? I've never heard you say," Neville asked George again, waiting to hear his opinion. Neville had never been particularly close to either of the twins but he had never known them to be quiet on any subject in the past, he wasn't sure why it had never occurred to him to wonder why the two of them had never been keen to speak about Harry before now.

The two of them glanced at one another before shrugging slightly. However, instead of answering, George let out a slow breath before he seemingly changed the subject, "did Fred or I ever tell you how we got to money to open our shop?"

Neville blinked at the change in topic, "er…no, I always thought that you made enough money from the products that you sold at Hogwarts to open it."

George laughed at that, "you've been giving us a bit too much credit. Cost us a lot of money to develop some of those original products. Then there was the money for the actual premises, advertising- if we had had to go off our own money alone we _still_ wouldn't have enough for our shop. No, Harry gave us all of his Tri-Wizard winnings."

"He gave it ALL to you?" Neville asked in surprise. "Why?"

"He tried to give it to the Diggory's first," Hermione added in quietly. "He thought it was rightfully Cedric's but his parents wouldn't take it. I don't think that he could bare to look at that money."

Ron frowned, "which is something I've never really understood. Harry gives away all those galleons because he thinks of it as blood money, but a year later he's willing to kill for Voldemort himself? I just…don't know how he changed so much." The redhead shook his head but seemed to have no answers for himself.

"Unless giving away the money was only a ploy…" Ginny said thoughtfully.

"Ginny," Fred said warningly, "we've been over before. You can't take everything that Harry has ever done and turn it against him!"

"What? Harry had to have joined You-Know-Who sometime, and no one was there in the graveyard with him. It's the thing that makes the most sense, doesn't it? Remember how Harry used to avoid talking about it? He never wanted to tell us what happened, until all of the sudden he's giving this whole article to Quibbler- probably after he and You-Know-Who probably worked out a story."

Hermione shook his head, "that was my idea Ginny. Harry didn't even know about it until I surprised him with that day. He couldn't have planned for me to show up with Rita Skeeter."

"But you agree that he never wanted to talk about it until after he had time to figure out what to say?"

Ron and Hermione both exchanged glances, as though that theory was as good as any explanation that they had come up with.

"I don't know," George said carefully. "I remember the day that Harry gave that money- the look on his face. It was…I can't really describe it to you. But whenever I think about what Harry did that day at Privet Drive, I think about his face the day he gave me and Fred that money, and I can't believe it was the same person."

"You mean that you've really thought that Harry was innocent this _whole_ time?" Neville asked.

George shook his head, "I'm saying that I've never really been entirely convinced."

"There was a trial," Neville argued, frowning slightly.

Fred nodded, "right and we all saw the evidence and I admit that the case was pretty airtight. They tested for the Imperious Curse on sight and there was none, they never needed to test for Polyjuice Potion because they had him locked up the whole time and the potion would have worn off eventually, if it had been used. He had the Dark Mark. Lucius Malfoy supposedly collaborated the story of Harry joining up with You-Know-Who, but then as far I'm concerned anything he says is a lie anyway. But what they _never_ did was let Harry tell his whole side of the story. I'm not talking about answering questions-" George said quickly when it looked as though Ron was about to object, "I mean really let him talk and explain what happened from the beginning."

"How could he possibly have explained all of that?" Hermione asked skeptically. "I've been thinking about it for years, I've wanted Harry to be innocent but...I just don't see how he possibly could be."

"And without getting his side, we wouldn't know, would we?" Fred asked pointedly.

"What do you think about what Harry was saying about Tyson, do you still trust him?" Ron asked turning to Hermione.

"I wouldn't have believed that Tyson was torturing prisoners if Daniel hadn't have backed him up. It's…barbaric."

There was a moment of thought as four of them considered what the Minister's actions would mean for them all. "Even if it's true, what can we do about it though?" Ron asked. "Tyson is incredibly popular and one of the cornerstones of his office was better preparation for Aurors. No one will want this program to stop."

There was no answer to this and once again Neville was reminded that very often he was simply shuffled between the powerful forces governing the Wizarding World. Speaking of powerful forces...Dumbledore was signaling them over and he didn't look particularly happy.

 **HPHPHPHP**

 **Meanwhile...back at Grimmauld Place**

The Order had evacuated as quickly as possible, leaving Harry and Draco alone. Harry took a moment to evaluate his feelings on the matter. He needed the Order to win but where he once would have been nervous, worried to the point of physical pain, about their safe return now he felt only cold pragmatism for the need for victory. Once he would have been longing to fight alongside the others, angered at being made helpless in the fight but now he only felt a spike of annoyance that they had missed years of his help because of their own refusal to look more closely at his case. When he had been fifteen it had been Harry's most ardent desire to help the Order but they had rejected that help out of hand and had been suffering the consequences whether they were even aware of it or not.

His scar was burning more fiercely than it had in a long time but he was not getting any clear visions or even vague feelings as to what was happening. Was it simply an effect of being outside of the magic- suppressing walls of Azkaban? The fortress was so seeped with misery and pain that wizards were significantly weaker inside its walls than anywhere else. It had proven to be one of the largest problems with having the Training Program stationed there, the fact that the young recruits were forced to struggle against the enduring pain that the Dementors left in their wake. However, Harry didn't think the freedom from Azkaban alone was the cause of this particularly intense connection. No, Voldemort was feeling...something...intensely. Though whether that feeling was triumph, disappointment, anger or even glee was impossible to know and Harry could only hope that the results were in his favor. Though to be honest it was hard to overtly root for the Order's victory after the reception he had received that morning.

For the moment Harry decided to focus on the savage pleasure of blaming Ivan Tyson for this attack. Tyson and his narcissistic need for attention and his utterly predictable ways in which he obtained it. Harry knew well enough that he was biased when it came to the man, that his judgement was compromised and that he was incapable of making it otherwise. However, that did not change the fact that well before he had learned the extent of Tyson's duplicity and corruption, he had known that the man had loved the spotlight. Loved power. To him the war was not a terrible curse on the people of his government or even a cause for real fear because to him the war was a means in which he would control the public.

He had heard rumors of Tyson's large community morale boosters- Maggie had mentioned it to him once, back when she had still thought the world of the man. Supposedly they had been extremely effective, not only were they known to be a great time for people and families to spend time together but it was known as a solid strike against Voldemort's greatest weapon…fear.

Personally, Harry hadn't known much about Tyson until the day that Maggie had come to say goodbye to him forever. He had no access to a newspaper, no way of talking to anyone in the outside world. His major source of information came from other inmates, who were not only unreliable but morally bankrupt and therefore did not provide him dependable opinions. Still it had been hard to ignore- or especially forgive- the fact that this man was the reason that the Aurors had been allowed, and compelled, to torture him on a daily basis.

It had been hard to ignore that from what little he had learned he had felt that Tyson had liked to talk more than act. He gave lovely speeches and he was known to be seen with the right people at the right times but even aside from the obvious, there had been _something_ about the man that Harry simply did not like. Something that was inherently untrustworthy. He hadn't been sure what it was except for the fact that he had seemed too smooth, too polished but mostly…it was the fact that he was so universally popular. Harry had learned the hard way how fickle the Wizarding world could be, and for no reason at all. The Wizarding World had been quick to hail him as a hero and quicker to condemn him as a criminal but Tyson had seemed to gain their unswerving loyalty and to Harry the obvious question seemed to be- 'how?'

Harry was pulled from his internal musings by Draco's drawling voice. "They are never going to believe you," he stated baldly.

The matter-of-factness of it hurt Harry worse than a taunt. He knew that Draco was more than likely right- they would never trust him again. Not really. Then again he also knew that Draco's lies had a limited shelf-life. "Maybe not, but they won't trust you forever," he answered as neutrally as possible. Draco was determined to get a rise out of him and he refused to give his rival the satisfaction. Harry had had far too much experience with being taunted and humiliated over the past few years to let _Draco Malfoy_ of all people get to him.

Draco smiled, "admit it Potter- you lost. The entire Wizarding World believes that you're a Death Eater and your best friends trust _me_ now."

Harry looked up at Draco and slowly a smiled curved onto his face as he realized just what the other man truly wanted out of his little charade he was pulling on the Order. Draco bowing the Voldemort because he had been too scared to carve out his own path in the world had never particularly surprised him. He had always known the other boy to be weak willed and a coward but to see that his true motivations were even pettier was delightful to hear.

"Oh, so that' it, is it? You _finally_ get to be me? Well congratulations, I know that's what you've always wanted. Tell me, when you essentially take over someone's life, are you _still_ jealous of them or do you actually think you have something of your own now?"

Draco sneered, his temper flaring in spite of himself and Harry braced himself to remain calm, knowing that would be the thing that would drive the other boy to madness. He wanted Harry to hurt, perhaps to feel all of the pain that Draco had felt all those years for coming in second best, being constantly considered to be and to feel inadequate in comparison to Harry. Draco was desperate to prove that after all this time he was finally the one on top and the former Slytherin would not be satisfied until he made Harry acknowledge that he had lost.

But Draco had never experienced true anguish and in that moment Harry knew that if the other boy ever did, it would break him. He never would have survived as Harry had done, lived what Harry had been forced to live through and not only for the past four years. Draco would not have survived the Dursleys. Or the true pressures of the Wizarding World as they had been forced onto Harry's shoulders time and time again. Draco would not have survived the people he considered closest to him turning their backs on him and finding the will to find others to trust and love. Harry knew anguish and for the first time he felt a quiet but grim pride that he _had_ survived. But in that moment he also decided tha Draco didn't get to see that pain, or the will that it took to overcome it, that was his and he wasn't sharing.

Draco, unaware of this startling epiphany sneered in anger, "Jealous? Of you? What could you possibly have that I want…now?" he asked mockingly.

He wasn't prepared for Harry to actually have an answer, "Not much, but at least I know that I have the truth."

Draco's eyes narrowed and his cheeks colored slightly, "and why the hell should I care about that?"

Harry smirked at him, he buried all of his pain, years of isolation and loss, hours of glares from people he had once considered family, and concentrated on inflicting pain for once. Relishing in the fact that Draco was still insecure, still the same jealous little boy that he had met when they were both eleven. "You must be really proud of yourself, getting Ginny to fall for you, although my guess is that you never expected to fall for her as well."

"I never said-"

"You didn't have to," Harry interrupted firmly. "I saw the way that she looks at you and I, more than most people, have seen that look from Ginny before, I know what it means. But I also saw the way that you look at her- you care about her. I don't think that was part of your plan though, was it? You needed someone in the Order that was going to go to bat for you because even if were the one to 'save' Snape...everyone knows you for the sneaky little ferret that you truly are. So you used her...but then you've never had anyone that actually cares about you before. And for all of Ginny's faults, she is beautiful and with all that passion and anger I bet she's just about dynamite in bed so I really can't blame you.

"But what do you think is going to happen when she finds out what you really are? Because she _will_ find out. Face it, Draco…you never really that good. When have _you_ ever won against _me_?" he finished softly, his eyes sparkling with a determined jeer.

Draco's face was flushed with pink and Harry stretched his smirk just a bit further, he didn't even have to fake it, he was actually quite enjoying himself at the moment.

"I would say that I've won against you every day for the past four years Potter!"

Harry shook his head, still maintaining that infuriating calm that was driving Malfoy to distraction. " _You_ have benefited from other people's victories, there's a difference. Voldemort beat me, your father beat me, even my worthless muggle relatives _beat_ me, but you? What have you ever really done besides running to a bunch of sympathetic fools and crying about how your daddy forced you into being a giant git for most of your life? Let me ask you, do you think Voldemort has really been impressed with the scrapes of information that you've been giving him? He's not a forgiving man Draco, and he expects a lot. I'm only asking because if I were you, I'd be wondering right about now who will kill me first. The Order or Voldemort? What do you think, because _personally_ my money is on Voldemort but if Lupin or Moody find another traitor…"

"Shut up Potter! You don't have fucking clue about any of this!"

Harry shrugged, seemingly without a care in the world, "Maybe you're right, I've been gone a long time, maybe you've changed. But tell me this much…how does it feel when you're lying with Ginny after she thinks the two of you have just 'made love' and she whispers in your ear about what a good man you are? Does she tell you that she's proud of you? Proud of the _man_ you've become? And what's it really like to know that all you've really been doing all this time… is pretending to be me?"

Draco backhanded Harry strongly across the face, taking every ounce of fury that he could muster into one violent swing. Harry rather thought that his jaw might be broken but he blinked away any tears that threatened, choked down any cry of pain and calmly turned his face back towards the Death Eater, lifting his eyebrow in silent affirmation of his questions.

He moved his jaw experimentally and was gratified to see that it still seemed to be working. He spoke again, this time more quietly, his words actually sincere. "Let me tell you something Draco…no matter what the sappy sayings might lead you to believe- losing the people that you love is a thousand times more painful than never having them in the first place, I should know." Harry grimaced as he remembered the days before Hogwarts when he had had absolutely no one in his life to turn to. No one to trust, no one to love him or even provide him with a simple kindness. And then he made what he had thought were the best friends and surrogate family he could ask for...only to lose every last one of them.

He let out a slow breath before he allowed that pain to resurface. "One day, probably a lot sooner than you think, Ginny is going to find out that everything about you is a lie. You're a fake Malfoy, you always have been- and she will _hate_ you for it."

Draco raised his wand and Harry thought that he was going to be cursed but Malfoy seemed to reign in his temper for the moment. "You've missed a lot, Potter," Draco seemed desperate to sound calm and intimidating but his voice was shaking slightly and Harry knew that he was trying to convince himself of these words even more than Harry, "I'm no longer your second fiddle. The Order trusts me, the Dark Lord depends on me and my father respects me- I have everything that I have _ever_ wanted and I will _not_ lose it. Especially not Ginny. If you think that I'm going to let _you_ of all people take away everything that I have built, you really are insane. The Order hates you, Ginny despises you and your ex-little-sidekicks? They pity you…"

Harry looked stoically into his enemies face, determined to reveal nothing and slightly surprised that he was succeeding as well as he was. "You're not telling me anything I don't already know, but you're right about one thing…I've already lost. I have _nothing_ left Draco, so what could you possibly do to me now? _You_? You have built everything you have on a crumbling tower of lies and no one is going to enjoy watching it fall apart more than me."

"We'll see Potter…as for now? I'm going to go leave a report to my _master_ , for after he returns from his victory, he'll want to know all about the interesting intel that you so generously gave us. And the Order? They all think I'm guarding a dangerous murderer. Irony Potter…got to love it."

HPHPHP

Draco had left to snitch to his master but Harry found that instead of being upset with the hypocrisy of the situation he was glad to see the little ferret leave. He was almost completely alone in the house now and the silence was liberating. Azkaban was never quiet. Bellowed curses, tortured cries, insane screams- the constant noise was draining. Harry had learned that the small little man that had watched the kids before the meeting was Daedalus Diggle, and it was true that he was not much of a fighter. The man had remained behind to mind the children but everyone else was blissfully gone.

Harry walked slowly through the house, relishing this momentary freedom. While the worst things about Azkaban were easy enough to identity, it was often the smaller infringements on his freedom that seemed to weigh unexpectedly on his soul. Like the fact that he was always being watched; he could never be alone or even to walk around when he wanted. In Azkaban he could never see so much as see the sun, he was unable to stretch his legs properly or even read a book.

With this in mind Harry eventually made his way to the a room that must have been the Library but Harry had been attracted as much by the large windows letting in the sun as he was by the rows of books. He took down a book on Wizarding traditions and customs with something like reverence. It was strange really; he had never been a big reader before. It had always seemed like a chore or an obligation, now it felt like a rare privilege. Perhaps it was Felix's influence, who had loved books and inspired in Harry a pure love of learning that none of his other professors or even Hermione had managed to nourish with the same passion. Perhaps it was simply that things that are forbidden to us are always more desirable. Whatever the reason, Harry was excited by the opportunity to finally read a book on his own.

He lost himself in the volume quickly, which is to say that he quite literally lost himself. He fell into one of his fixed states. Unable to focus on the world around him or even his own thoughts. He had lapsed into a black hole in his mind.

"Harry! Harry! HARRY!" a high pitched voice shrieked in his ear and Harry snapped back to the present with a jolt. Auggie was grinning at him, "were you asleep Harry? Your eyes were open but you didn't see me or answer me."

"ER…I think I was Auggie," Harry answered shakily. Loss of time was not a new sensation for him, nor was waking from that fugue-like dream state to the realization that he had no conception of what had been going on around him, but it was always a disquieting feeling. Never sure how much time had passed or what had happened. Never quite sure if the next time he might not wake from it at all. Harry struggled to pull himself together in front of the small boy, determined to not scare him. "Do you know what time it is?"

"It's past lunch time but everyone is still gone. I think Teddy was getting worried before Mr. Diggle told us both to take a nap. Mr. Diggle always forgets that I'm not a baby- I don't take naps anymore so I wanted to make sure that everything was alright. For Teddy I mean…when he wakes up."

"Oh Teddy was worried was he?" Harry asked, knowing that the small boy was too young for such concerns. He might miss his mother but he had no real conception of where she had gone or the type of danger that she might be in, no reason not to believe that she would always come back to him. Auggie was different though. It was true, Auggie wasn't a 'baby' and as such needed even more reassurance at times like this.

"Well little kids gets ascared sometimes," Auggie answered with his a shrug, his eyes downcast to avoid looking at Harry in the face.

Harry nodded, "It's a good thing that Teddy has you to remind him that sometimes things take time and that everyone is just fine."

Auggie bit his lip and looked up at Harry with wide, round eyes, full of trust. "You sure?"

Harry paused, it had been a long time since someone had looked at him with that kind of trust and he was determined not to lie. As a child he had been lied to constantly for 'his own good' and it had caused him nothing but pain. "Well Auggie we can't know what happened yet but we don't have a reason to worry yet either, do we? It seems silly to worry unless you have a reason to."

Auggie considered these words carefully, as if testing the theory for flaws. "What if they're all dead?" he asked.

Harry blinked, unused to the blunt observations of children. "I don't think so. The Order is big and powerful which means that it would take a lot to kill everyone. And if it's silly to worry about things we don't know will happen then I think it's stupid to worry about things that can't happen. Now," Harry added cutting off Auggie's next point, "since no one has come back yet with any _bad_ news than my guess is that they don't have any news yet at all, so we just have to be patient, alright?"

Auggie nodded with a small smile gracing his lips, "I think you're right Harry, you're really smart."

Harry smiled back, "I just know how you feel. When you care about people you worry about them, but unless you want to worry all the time you need to save it for when it matters. It can be hard but you have to try and...trust that things will work out."

Auggie smiled and nodded. "Whatcha doing here Harry? Why didn't you go and fight too? Are you bad at it like Mr. Diggle?"

Harry chuckled at this question. "Not as bad as some people wish I was," Harry answered ruefully. "I'm not allowed to go."

"Why not?"

"Remember when I told you that I'm from Azkaban? Well when you go to prison there are a lot of things that you aren't allowed to do anymore, fighting with the Order is one of them. Speaking of the Order, aren't you supposed to be with Diggle right about now?" he asked pointedly.

Auggie flushed rather guiltily. "Diggle is really bor-ing," he explained sheepishly. "And he treats me like a baby all the time."

"Well that can get annoying," Harry sympathized, much to 6 year-old's delight.

"How did you get away?"

Auggie shrugged, "Mr. Diggle puts us in our room and then locks the door till after naptime but sometimes Kreacher will let me out if I ask him nicely. He hates all the grown-ups in the Order so unless Professor Dumbledore tells him to do something he always does what he wants."

Harry smiled a bit in amusement. "Kreacher is still here then?" He had been wondering about the old elf, who he had not yet come across. He was the best means of testing is little theory.

Auggie nodded, "Kreacher _never_ leaves the house," he elaborated as though this were common knowledge, and perhaps to anyone that had been around for the past few years it was. After all, Harry recalled that the last time the house-elf had ventured away from Number 12 it was to conspire in Sirius' death. He doubted Dumbledore would allow something like that to happen again. Not that Sirius was helped by this new caution.

It had been Felix that had first brought up the subject of Sirius' will to Harry and the fact that he was more than likely his Heir. One day during on their many talks, Harry had been telling the man about his godfather's horrid family. He had spoken about the fact that Sirius had not had anyone- no family, barely any friends and certainly not any that had been good enough to give benefit of the doubt and demand a trial when Sirius had been arrested. But Sirius had meant to the world to Harry for the simple reason that he had been the only adult to ever truly love him- and then Harry had foolishly fallen for Voldemort's trap and had gotten the man killed.

It had been a rather self-pitying rant but Felix had grasped on to something important. Sirius was the sole Black Heir and the only person that he cared about in the world was Harry. Felix had believed that Harry had been named as the Black Heir but there had been no way to confirm that…until now. Felix had told him all about lines of succession and the passage of property in the Wizarding World. "Kreacher!" Harry called out experimentally, voice barely raised above talking level.

Instantly there was an abrupt pop and Kracher appeared, glaring hatefully at him. It was true then, the House was his and the Order had been foolish enough to 'imprison' him within its walls,

"New master has finally arrived to join his blood traitor friends. After they rob my poor Mistress of everything that she holds dear and force Kreacher to do their dirty bidding. Master abandoned Kreacher to mudbloods and muggle-lovers." Kreacher was almost exactly the same as Harry remembered him. Dirty, angry and mad, the elf was muttering in that peculiar way that always made Harry unsure if he was meant to be overheard or not.

"Hello Kreacher," Harry said evenly.

Auggie looked at Harry in wonder, " _you're_ Kreacher's master? I thought that he didn't have one!"

"This house was my godfather's, he left it to me when he died."

"Ungrateful Master is taking from my noble Mistress! Kreacher is slave to mudbloods now!" He wailed piteously

"I'm not taking away anything Kreacher, you can talk to your Mistress any time you want." The worlds were spoken before Harry had time to think about them. He should hate Kreacher for what he had done to Sirius, but the truth was…he couldn't. Not anymore, not when he knew what it felt like to be under the thumb of another person, to be controlled by someone that you despised and worse still to be mistreated by an entity that you could not fight against. Someone or something that was stronger than you and beat you down just to mock you. Sirius had treated Kreacher terribly because he had hated the elf for reminding him of his terrible family and the pain they had caused him as a child.

Harry understood that and he didn't blame his godfather for it, not with all of the pain Sirius had been carrying around and the growing understanding that Sirius had been in need of mental help after Azkaban that everyone had ignored. Harry had had Maggie to help him but Sirius, even if he had his ability to transform into Padfoot, had stayed with Dementors surrounding his cell for 12 years, and the Order had locked him away in the very place that many of his nightmares had no doubt stemmed from. The fact that Sirius had taken out is depression and anger on the elf that had helped bring about so much misery was understandable if rather sad, but Harry could not support it.

"Filthy blood traitor master is lying to Kreacher," the elf muttered, starting to rock back and forth in increasing agitation.

Harry stayed calm, his voice was even and soothing, for some reason it seemed important to prove to Kreacher that he was not going to be another person in his life that hurt him. "I'm not lying to you Kreacher. You have the right to serve whoever you want. If you want to continue serving the Blacks you can do that, if you don't want to serve anyone…I'll set you free." The Order would be furious, allowing Kreacher free range with the knowledge of their secrets, but Harry found that he truly didn't give a damn what any of them thought. Dumbledore should have freed Kreacher from the start, before he had learned any of the Order's secrets. It had been Dumbledore that had insisted that Sirius and Kreacher remain together until it became impossible to get rid of Kreacher.

"Yous is tricking Kreacher, giving him clothes so that he can never come back and see his Mistress again. Kreacher is serving the Black family until he dies! Kreacher is a good and loyal house-elf! Master is taking Mistress' house from her!" Kreacher wailed hysterically.

"Kreacher please be quiet so that you can listen to me. I don't want to take make you unhappy. I don't understand why you care so deeply for the Blacks- they seem like terrible people to me." Harry only had the truth and no reason or desire to lie to the House-elf. He wouldn't use Kreacher as a slave but he didn't need the little conspirer that had taken Sirius from him to like him either. In truth if he had received Kreacher four years ago when Sirius had died he would have wanted to mount the elf's head on the wall with his other relatives. It was only years of torment that had given him sympathy for the elf, and it was limited.

Kreacher looked mutinous but Harry continued calmly, "But I know that they must have treated you well and I know that you care about them deeply. I don't want to force you into serving me against your will but I've never had a House-elf before, I don't know what to do or how any of this works. I think that you could help me though, would you do that?"

"House elves are a opposed to help wizards," Auggie added as though this were obvious. Harry blinked, he had been so caught with his own thoughts that he almost forgotten the boy was still in the room. It had been a problem that Maggie had once talked to him about during a therapy session, his difficult in keeping his mind on multiple things because it was hard enough to concentrate on one thing. He had been improving but then she had died. He needed to be more careful though, here in this house, with the Order around there were always multiple things to consider.

"Only if they want to help though," Harry said, forcing his attention onto the boy. "Everyone- people or elves-has the right to be happy. When an elf is serving a master that they love and respect they like what they are doing, am I right Kreacher?"

"Mistress and Master Regulus were fine, noble wizards. Wonderful examples of fine purebloods. Master Sirius was a naughty boy who broke Mistress' heart with his wild ideas. Bad boy, deserved to pay!" he added. Harry's fist clenched and it was only Auggie's innocent, trusting gaze that kept him from punching the elf for disparaging Sirius' memory.

"Sirius was the person I loved most in the world," Harry said quietly, his face serious and sincere. "I know that he and his mother…they didn't get on but Sirius was always kind to me. He looked out for me. I think that he was probably the only person in my life besides my parents that really loved me."

Augie was looking at Harry with wide eyes at this confession, part awe, part horrified fascination and suddenly Harry felt inexplicably embarrassed.

"I know that you hated Sirius and that Sirius hated your Mistress but…I don't think that means that you and I have to hate each other."

"Master is making Kreacher serve his blood traitor friends."

"You don't have to give them anything," Harry said forcefully. Suddenly he was enraged at the notion of the very people that had testified against him at his trial, that had sent him unjustly to Azkaban were now living in his house and ordering around his House-elf without his knowledge or consent. "I don't want anything Kreacher. You can clean or not clean, you can talk to your Mistress and you can ignore everyone else in this house but…if you hear something that you think I should know about, I would appreciate it if you told me. That's not really an order just a…request."

Kreacher was staring at him wide eyed and suddenly Harry was frighteningly reminded of Dobby.

"Master is letting Kreacher do as he pleases?" Kreacher asked carefully.

Harry nodded, "that's right, I want you to be happy Kreacher, which means making your own decisions. You can talk to your Mistress or you're always free to talk to me if you want, but you don't have to."

"What if Master is needing Kreacher's help?" the House-elf asked cagily, clearly testing the waters.

"I would appreciate your help Kreacher, I'm sure I could use it but I won't _order_ you to do to it unless you decide that accepting orders makes you happy, but I don't want you to punish yourself anymore, not for any reason, is that alright?"

Kreacher burst into rather hysterical sobs at this point, clinging furiously to Harry's leg calling him 'Kind Master' again and again.

When Kreacher had finally quieted down Harry said quietly, "you can call me Harry."

"Yes Master Harry, Kreacher will make you very happy indeed sir," Kreacher said with more excitement that Harry had ever heard from the elf before he disapparated.

Auggie was looking at him with a thoughtful expression.

"You're nice to everyone, Harry."

"I don't know about that." Harry said with a bit of a frown. He was forcing himself to be polite to the Order but truth be told, just being in the same room with them set his teeth on edge. The fact that they hated him now was upsetting but Harry had resigned himself to that a long time ago- there was more than a few times over the past few years when he felt that the feeling might be mutual. However, it was the condescension that he really couldn't stand. The fact that they looked at him as if they were better than him, stronger than him because he had been weak enough to fall in line with Voldemort. Weak enough to let the Dursleys beat him down until there was nothing left. As though none of them would cracked under the same circumstances- personally Harry felt that many of them would have turned for a lot less.

And now it was clear that they felt that he should feel grateful towards them because they were granting him the favor of being out of Azkaban- even though he was only out because they needed _his_ help. The only thing stopping him beating the closest one he could find to a pulp with his bare hands was the fact that despite everything, they actually were on the same side. Harry's main target was Voldemort. Destroying him at any cost, even if it meant making nice with the lesser of two evils.

Auggie shook his head and looked up with determined eyes, "You were nice to Kreacher and no one is ever nice to him. Sometimes Herm'ione tries to be but he doesn't like her, so she gives up. You kept being nice until he liked you."

"I think everyone should try to be as nice as they can, don't you?" Harry said carefully.

Auggie frowned, "I thought people in Azkaban are mean."

Harry let out a slow breath, trying to collect his thoughts and explain something that even he didn't understand to a small child. Harry had only known Auggie and Teddy for a few hours, it had only been that morning that they had come into his bedroom, but somehow it felt much longer. Regardless how much time it actually was, he was surprised to find that he already cared for them both quite a bit.

"Most people aren't all good or all bad, Auggie," Harry started, echoing back to what Maggie had told him when the two of them had first gotten together. "We're made up of all the things that we do. Now when we do something bad, we get punished for it and when you're a grown-up and do something really bad, you go to Azkaban. But just because you've done something bad in the past, it doesn't mean that you still can't do good or that you can't be a good person, do you understand?"

Auggie nodded slowly as though this concept was just beginning to take root until he thought of something else, "If you're good now, do they let you go home again?"

Harry winced, good behavior in Azkaban was not quite what it was in the muggle world. "Sometimes, that's a bit complicated. It's up to a lot of different people."

"Will they let you go home since you're good now?"

Harry shook his head, "I'm sentenced for life, Auggie. That means that I can never go home. After I'm done helping the Order they'll take me back to prison."

"But that's not fair!"

Harry inwardly agreed wholeheartedly. "Some other people don't think that it's fair to let someone whose done a bad thing go free because they're worried that they'll do it again."

"Would you do it again Harry? The bad thing that you did, would do it again?"

Harry sighed, faintly seeing the irony of the situation. Harry had been questioned relentlessly about his actions from the day of the arrest on. They had twisted his words, confusing him until even he wanted to second guess what he had done, or had wanted to do, that day. When they had failed to get a confession out of him by berating him, they had turned to potions, when potions failed they turned to torture, and when that failed they convicted him based on circumstantial evidence. They used him again and again in the Auror Training classes- he was Higgin's favorite because he was the only prisoner to continually stick to his story. The Aurors were convinced that he refused to break and that was partly true- it was just that he refused to lie.

Never once in four years had Harry said or even implied that he was guilty but now…for some reason it felt wrong to tell this young boy that the Ministry locked up innocent people. That his parents and their friends had turned their back on one of their own with very little evidence and put him in hell. It seemed wrong to destroy someone so trusting.

"Auggie…I told you that I couldn't really tell you about what happened or why I was arrested and I know that you don't think that that's fair. The thing is…it's very complicated and the Order doesn't understand it as much as they think that they do. Which is why I can't tell you, someday I will but…not right now. The important thing for you to know right now is that I don't want to hurt anyone, do you believe that?"

Auggie nodded, "I believe you Harry," He said solemnly. "But they still won't let you leave? Even though you won't do anything bad again?"

"They don't know that I won't and…they don't think that they can trust me."

"Do you miss your house and mum and dad?"

"I miss a lot of people Auggie, but I'm happy to be here, for now at least. Sometimes you have to be happy with being alright for a little while."

"I wish you never had to leave, you're the coolest grown up ever Harry."

"I wish that I never had to leave either but you never forget the people that you care about and that's why I'll always remember you."

They were interrupted by a piercing shriek and mad, cackling insults.

"That's Mrs. B, the Order must be back."

"Let go make sure everyone is safe then, shall we?" Harry said, leading Auggie out the door and towards the staircase, grateful to not have to explain anymore about himself to the small boy who seemed to idolize him so quickly.

 **A/N: Thanks everyone for the reviews. I was pleasantly surprised to see many people that don't like Remus as much as I do. It often seems in fanfiction that the man can do no wrong but I always saw him as an incredibly weak character that did whatever was easiest in the moment (i.e. failing to inform the Headmaster of a school of innocent children how a mass murderer was not only getting in and out of the Castle but also how he was hiding in plain sight, all because he didn't want the man to be 'disappointed in him'?)**

 **Also in answer to a review because I think a lot of people were thinking along similar lines: someone mentioned that if Harry is the owner of Grimmauld Place, he should be able to just use the wards to kick everyone out. Harry is the master of the House but honestly I try as much as possible to go with canon descriptions of things and there was never any mention that wards that were capable of doing that regardless of what fanon leads us to believe. I cite the example of accidently showing Yaxley Grimmauld in DH and forcing Harry and Co to abandon the house for the rest of the book. If Harry couldn't expel Yaxley, then I really can't reconcile him booting out the entire Order. Instead, now that he has Kreacher's loyalty he will also get information from Kreacher. Kreacher cannot lie to him and after Harry's newfound kind treatment towards him, Kreacher will be motivated to help him 'House-elf style'- which again I see as more subtle than a lot of stories that show House-elves to basically be all powerful beings. There are a few advantages to Harry being the actual owner but more than anything this is another way in which the Order has used and discarded Harry when they longer have purpose for him and Harry recognizes that.**

 **Next Up: Dumbledore's motives become clear and Remus is forced to owe one to Harry in a big way...**


	12. Confessions for a Greater Good

**Chapter 12: Confessions for a Greater Good**

Draco exited Grimmauld Place and quickly made his way down to the side alley so that he could apparate back to Malfoy Manor, a place that he had made a great show of abandoning for his new penniless existence as a do-gooder. He remembered the day that he had arrived with a few bags at the Burrow of all places. The manor, of course, had needed to be abandoned as it had already been leaked to Order intelligence that the Dark Lord had set up operations there and while in truth Draco would have never dreamed of making his Lord move from their family home, he also had the set excuse that he was incapable of such a task. In the end, the fact that Draco had walked away from both his parents and his former status and wealth had only added to his credibility with the Order.

He honestly hadn't planned on the rain that had soaked him to the skin when he stood on the doorstep of the dilapidated house the Weasleys called home, but he felt that it was a perfect touch to the pitiful picture that he had been struggling so hard to project. Ginny had been endlessly sympathetic, most of the male Weasleys had been unusually expressionless, aside from Ron, but Draco had always known that his yearmate would never believe his abrupt defection easily. However, that day he had won over the Weasley matriarch irrevocably, and had learned that where Molly Weasley led, the rest of her family eventually followed. For a boy that had been taught from a young age to project nothing but confidence and poise he was quite impressed with his own performance. But most importantly, it had quite possibly been the best in a long line of subtle, and not so subtle, ways in which Draco had drawn himself increasingly into the inner circle of the Order.

Making sure that he had been sympathetic to the right people. Ensuring that he was seen as invaluable to others. It had not been easy, not as easy as he had first thought when he had run to 'warn' Snape about Potter exposing him as a spy and sobbed that he did not want to follow in his father's footsteps. Draco had never hidden his thoughts and feelings about the Pureblood agenda from the world. As early as First Year he had taken great pride in taking his rightful place in the social hierarchy and the Order was filled with the very people that he had maligned in the past. But Gryffindors were nothing if not emotional and they delighted in redemption and forgiveness. It had taken time and cunning and a skill that he was sure that no one but himself had to accomplish, but he had done it. They trusted him and he had used that trust to direct them away from the people that he was most concerned about.

Draco had made his sacrifices and soon it would be coming to an end. The Dark Lord had been rising silently and systematically for years and the Ministry and Order were both too blind to even see it. Draco delighted in seeing their ridiculous celebrations, knowing that most were all small steps to his master's success. The Dark Lord was nearing his final stages and when he at long last had complete domination, it would be Draco that he rewarded for his loyalty.

Draco swept into the foyer, his stride becoming more graceful, his posture straightening. He had picked up some truly horrendous habits among the Gryffindor band of misfits that he had been forced into spending all of his time with. The Weasleys were exceedingly casual in everything that they did, whether it was dinner, Order meetings or even their comings and goings they were loud and friendly, they were constantly teasing and sniping at one another and when the odd explosion or near disaster erupted in a separate room there was a puzzling lack of reaction from the rest of them. Draco had been near terrified the first time he had experienced the house shaking around them, certain the Twin Terrors were going to kill them all. He would never admit to anyone that he had grown to like it.

"Draco," the Dark Lord greeted coolly from the throne-like chair that he had built into what had once been the drawing room but was now used for more private audiences between the Death Eaters and their beloved master, "I trust that you have important information to relay to me if you are risking coming at this time."

Draco fell to his knees in front of the man, "Yes, my Lord. The Order is currently responding to the attack and I knew that between the battle and the recovery I would have a few hours. They believe that I am watching Potter."

There was silence that always made Draco tense. It was always hardest to gauge the Dark Lord's mood when he was quiet. "And Potter believes...?"

"He has seen me at the prison, my Lord, he is aware of my true loyalties but there is no one that will believe him. He tried to question me even today and the Order defended me vehemently. Your plans are safemaster." Draco struggled not to sound smug, he had been punished for his 'arrogance' in the past when speaking with his master and had learned that no matter what he had accomplished it was always best to cite everything in terms of what the Dark Lord had done or how it benefited him. Unless, of course, he was speaking of mistake or a failure, those were never the Dark Lord's fault. Another lesson that he had learned painfully. He had not been able to leave his bed for two days after that particular lesson.

"And Severus?" the man hissed and Draco shivered as a coldness trickled down his spine, hatred rolling off the man in waves. Severus Snape had betrayed the Dark Lord and lived to tell the tale, something that no other man could claim. The Death Eaters all knew that the man's defection had been used for a greater purpose but they also knew that since he had been spared he had been put to the top of the Kill List...and yet had still managed to survive.

"He's still not completely trusted by most of them after his information about the attack by the Death Eaters led to the death of those muggles and two Aurors. It's still hurting his credibility. He led them into a trap, just as you planned and now none of them are trusting his information."

"But you have failed in your task to regain his trust?" the Dark Lord pressed and Draco swallowed convulsively, terrified of the pain that was sure to come.

"Yes sir...I failed you but I have ensured that Snape's position in the Order is irrelevant. I've positioned myself well, my Lord. I am now among the most trusted and those that question me are seen as traitors themselves."

There was another beat of silence before the Dark Lord seemed to decide to switch topics. "Severus' other little group is being taken care of and he finds himself alone and isolated. His end is near but he will suffer before I will allow him to die. Has Potter been cooperating with them or has he chosen to finally acknowledge that his so-called friends care nothing for him?"

"Potter...is angry with them. He doesn't trust them and he's been fighting with the werewolf in particular, but he...did tell them of our plans to break out the prisoners in Azkaban."

The Dark Lord gave a tight nod, looking as though this was expected, but still remained pensive. Draco desperately wanted to tell his master the true reason why Potter had been furloughed from the prison but Dumbledore's spells were impenetrable. He could not speak of the Horcruxes or even their locations. He had instead tried to give his master some vague clues, explaining that Potter was being released to help with sensitive material that only he was able to do. That his blood was important, hoping the man would make the connection.

"Have they revealed their true goal to him yet?"

"No my Lord, though I suspect that they will do it after this latest attack. They only have a week with Potter and if this mission is successful...there is a chance they might ask his help with one of the others..." hoping the man again made the connection between multiple Horcruxes.

"Then I suppose it's time that we accelerated our time table."

HPHPHP

Albus Dumbledore let out a weary sigh as the last of the Death Eaters disapparated or found other means of escape; the battle was, at long last, drawing to a close but the devastation was clear. The attack had been better organized than past events and the fighting style was…scarily targeted to inflict the most amount of damage on the surrounding Aurors as possible. Albus could see that at least part of Harry's information was already proving correct- the Death Eaters were learning the playbook of the Auror Training Regime and counter-acting it point by point. However, there had been no massive breakout for several years and the only prisoners involved in the program were those that were sentenced to life…so where were the Death Eaters getting their information?

Reports were still coming in but the Order had taken a large hit, the largest they had seen since the First War in fact. Kingsley Shacklebolt was dead. So were Emmeline Vance, Hestia Jones, Monroe Carter, and Jefferson Anderson. Alastor was bleeding heavily but was at least still standing. Fred Weasley had looked to be injured but thankfully it had not looked to be serious. Charlie, however, had been taken to St. Mungo's, unconscious but stable. His partner Alex Gwynn had been unhurt but seemed to be experiencing signs of shock. Albus thought it rather tragic that not many of the young people were - to him it only reinforced how adapted they had all become to violence.

As Albus tried to simultaneously gather information and organize an effective recovery system for the victims of the attack, he allowed himself to once again question the direction the war had taken. It had progressed differently than he had anticipated. Voldemort seemed…unsure of his attack plan. Despite having a year of almost undisturbed planning and preparing due to Fudge's refusal to believe that he had returned, the Dark Lord had not seemed anxious to jump into a head first competition with the Ministry of Magic. Instead he had proceeded with almost extreme caution, seemingly in no rush to get to his ultimate goal but moving with a precision and unpredictability that made Albus truly miss having a well-placed and skilled spy in the man's Inner Circle.

Part of that caution, Dumbledore knew, was courtesy of Ivan Tyson. The man had risen to power at precisely the right time. He was both charismatic and decisive. Bold and yet not reckless. He had come into office brimming with confidence but what was more, he had both the ideas and the skill to back up that confidence. Albus was more than wary of the man as he had lived long enough to know that decisions that someone like Tyson made were not merely out of the goodness of his heart. He had known Ivan as a student and knew of his insecurities, the deep seated ambition that had driven him towards success. There were times, few but critical, when Albus knew that he and Tom Riddle had very similar approaches to things and he knew that the self-styled Dark Lord was positioning himself in such a way that the regime would crack from the inside out.

Albus had been working tirelessly...and part of him was terrified that it was in fact fruitlessly...to prevent these plans from happening while still being able to maintain a cordial relationship with the current administration. He had learned a valuable lesson after the tension that he had been created with Fudge. He had felt that by working alongside the Ministry it would enable both organizations to be stronger and work efficiently. He had wanted to help guide the Ministry in the right direction and end the war as peacefully as possible. He had a feeling that he had failed. He could only hope that his true plan, the only plan that could truly succeed, paid off. He had certainly paid for it with his very soul but of course that was nothing to the price Harry had paid.

"We only nabbed five Death Eaters," Alastor informed him, coming up to his side and panting heavily from his injuries. "I don't like it…this was vastly different than any attack that we've seen before. They knew exactly where to attack, how to escape, which spells to use- how did they get so organized so quickly?"

"I had similar thoughts myself. It appears that Harry's information is correct, the Death Eaters are planning on using our techniques against us and from what we witnessed today they were successful."

"Potter was talking about a large scale breakout for that purpose. The way they were fighting I doubt they need to bother! It looks like they already got that information from somewhere," Alastor pointed out.

"We both know that the lines of communication out of Azkaban have not been secure for some time. We have both pushed for the Ministry to make changes in regards to their visiting rooms but with so many things to change and update this was something that fell through the cracks. But it appears that Tom needed to accelerate his plans. He is not be happy that Harry is out of prison and with us."

Alastor scowled, his scarred face turning rather frightening, "You believed him then? You think he would give us accurate intel against his former master?"

"You yourself pointed out to us all that Death Eaters rarely feel loyalty to anyone but themselves. Harry has been in Azkaban for nearly four years, and in all that time what help has he received? It would certainly seem that the pragmatic decision would be to help the side that is currently helping him, don't you think?" Albus asked shrewdly. For the first time in quite a while, Albus was unsure who he was trying to convince. Was he merely trying to use the Ex-Auror's trademark paranoia against him so that he could give Harry a decent excuse for turning on the man? Or was he trying to convince himself as well?

There was, after all, the distinct possibility that Harry was doing nothing more than genuinely attempting to help them. There was much more to Harry than a simple case of a young man switching sides. More complicated than anyone in the Order could possibly know or understand.

There was a beat before Alastor spoke again, it was a sympathetic tone that Albus had only heard a handful of times over the years but always when he had most needed to hear it. "Albus…I know that you used to care for the boy, and hell, knowing you, part of you still does. Merlin knows...even I can admit that the kid got a raw deal in his life. Parents murdered, abused by those monsters that called themselves relatives, and then our world could never make up its damn mind if they wanted to hold him up on pedestal or knock him into the ground. You know me, I've never been one to sympathize with a criminal but if anyone had a reason to snap and flip sides, it was probably Potter. But that doesn't change the fact that he made his choices and we made ours. I've told you before- you can't save everyone in this world."

Albus nodded his understanding, not for the first time forcing himself to view the situation objectively, that was what he had done that day when he had first learned of the horrors done at Privet Drive. He had forced himself to look at the larger picture, to look at all of his options and see that there had been only one choice to make. Once again Albus had needed to look at what was good for the war, the people of the Wizarding World, not one unfortunate boy who fate had seemingly cursed to carry too many burdens. That did not mean that Albus had been happy with the decisions that he had made. Nor that he hadn't second guessed himself everyday thereafter.

"As you say, Harry had more reason than anyone for acting as he did that day but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take what he has to say to us now seriously."

Alastor continued, "You know that I don't trust anything a Death Eater has to say, but if Potter's willing to squeal on his former friends than we should weigh what he's saying rather than dismissing it out of hand. Starting with the fact that we need to have our Aurors learn to go a bit off script here or we're going to be in trouble."

"Yes, I agree. The revelations made about this Auror Training Program are quite disturbing to say the least. Not even taking into consideration the sheer cruelty that our Ministry has been using and the complete secrecy under which they have made at least one major decision, it was remarkably foolish to allow the enemy to see our fighting strategies."

Alastor nodded before becoming distracted by a young Auror that was incorrectly trying to heal one of the wounded and frustrating the older man to a point where he felt that he needed to step in. He hobbled away to assist, too far for any but one with a magical eye to notice anything amiss, and Dumbledore looked at the man fondly as he realized that the Ex-Auror had once again been keeping track of all movements in the room while holding a private conversation.

Albus sighed to himself, once more forcing himself to think through all of his decisions, convincing himself that he was making the right choices and trying to escape the constricting feeling of guilt that had wound its way around his chest. Nearly four years ago Albus had made the decision not to act in any way to defend Harry. He had made the decision to allow events to take their course and had remained until that day silent on the subject no matter how many Order members had asked him his feelings on it or how many times it had come up in Order meetings. He knew that most took his silence as agreement and he supposed for all intents and purposes it was. He had agreed that it was too dangerous for Harry Potter to remain free and to act independently. He had agreed that it had been the body of Harry Potter that had tortured his relatives and killed an innocent woman. However, he had never once believed _Harry_ to be responsible for those crimes.

There were many things about Harry that he had never told the Order. Like the fact that he was almost completely certain that Harry was an accidental Horcrux. Or that he believed that it was the influence of that dark piece of soul- lodged into a boy that had suffered more than anyone's fair share of hardship and pain- that had caused the boy to stray down such a dark path himself.

There were two things that Dumbledore believed in quite certain of concerning the events of that fateful day at Privet Drive. The first being that, unfortunate though it might be- Harry was guilty. There was no other explanation for the events as they had played out. The wards would not have allowed for another person to get into the house. There had been no signs of Polyjuice. Harry's wand had been used. Albus was a logical man and would not allow himself to disregard facts when they were clear.

However, the second certainty was that the poor boy had not been acting completely of his own free will. Albus couldn't be sure whether Harry had been fully possessed as he on that night at the Department of Mysteries when he had thought that it would be a one-time occurrence. Or if after being exposed to such powerful dark magic for so long, when Harry's uncle had beaten him so viciously, the anger and perhaps even hatred that he had felt had caused the boy to snap, perhaps only for a moment but long enough for his own soul to become tainted. Damaged. Thus enabling that dormant soul fragment from Voldemort to become active, to take control of a soul that that had been so badly abused and miserable that it had been unable to prevent being enslaved by the soul of the man that cursed its Host to being with. Voldemort was responsible for these crimes but that did not change the result and as much as it pained him to say it- Harry's actions could not be trusted.

Ideally, Albus would have liked to have had Harry monitored and cared for under better conditions. St. Mungo's, for example, or even a safehouse guarded by an Order member. Constantly supervised but not punished for actions he could not fully control. Perhaps with proper care and love the boy could have learned to establish complete dominance and control over the soul fragment. He would have had the support of his friends to help. If emotional support or even therapy failed, potions could have kept him slightly sedated but would not have destroyed his quality of life. There could have even been a chance of home schooling so that he could still eventually graduate...if it was even deemed safe enough for the boy to have a wand.

The safe house he had ruled out immediately because Dumbledore wasn't sure if the Order would have been able to hold the young wizard indefinitely. Harry was very powerful. More powerful than most gave him credit for. The lad had overpowered the possessed body of Quirrell and fought Voldemort himself at the tender age of eleven. While it had been Lily's sacrifice that had fueled that magic, it had been Harry's raw power and determination that had made such a victory possible. He had killed a basilisk at the age of 12, taken on a hundred Dementors at the age of 13 and dueled a newly-restored Voldemort at 14. Harry had the potential to be among one of the most powerful wizards in the world - a wonderful asset when the boy (or man, now) was in his right mind but exorbitantly dangerous when he wasn't. If they failed in their attempt to heal Harry, he could have easily lashed out and hurt or even killed any one of them.

As for the St. Mungo's option…there was no way of explaining that Harry wasn't in control of his actions without revealing the knowledge of Horcruxes and that was one piece of information that Albus knew he could never let Tom know. He had once told Harry that his greatest mistake was that he had once allowed his feelings for Harry to overshadow what was best for the rest of the world. It was a mistake that he couldn't afford to make again. Harry didn't deserve Azkaban (few people did, in Albus' mind, it was truly a terrible place) but he couldn't have Harry go free without letting the rest of the world know that he had a way of defeating Voldemort for good.

Harry had been a casualty of war.

"Albus," Bill Weasley said, interrupting Albus' train of thoughts, "We have some upsetting news. One of the Death Eaters that we captured, we questioned him under Veritaserum while he was still disoriented and he said something about a plan for Voldemort to move something from a cave. I think the Death Eaters know about our plan to go after the Horcrux."

"How the bloody hell could they find out something like that?" Alastor asked panting once more after returning from having berated the young Auror for his mistake.

Severus came forward and frowned, "I believe I've made my suspicions clear on that front."

"Malfoy…" Alastor growled, he had never trusted the boy would turn from his family.

Severus nodded, having warned them against the boy in the past, but in recent years it had appeared to most that the former spy was jealous of his replacement more than anything else. His own intelligence was often spotty and unreliable and several members had pointed out that Severus must feel inadequate in his position.

For Albus, they were more than suspicions, but once again had chosen to keep his own counsel on the subject. Always best to keep spies and enemies as close as possible. The boy was a skilled liar, he was forced to admit, but not perfect. Not as good as Severus had once been and continued to be. Severus' irregular information was the best they could find in anyone not directly tied into the Death Eaters and Albus often marveled at his potions master's ability to ferret out what he needed from people. The timing of the boy's defection had been too convenient. His overtures too rushed at times. But it was useful to Albus for Tom to get certain information at certain times.

With the charms on the Order, Draco would be unable to pass him anything crucial and while he was not surprised that Draco had managed to get a hint of their hunt for Horcruxes across to his Lord, he had also known Tom well enough to know that he would not tip his hand until he had seen Albus'. Tom was incurably curious and he would know that the Order would have had to jump through hoops to get Harry released. Albus had been banking on Tom waiting until they acquired custody of the boy to make a move and then be able to follow his scrambled moves back to the hiding places of the hidden objects. With Tom's arrogance and paranoia, if they played things correctly, the end of the war could be closer than anyone realized.

"We don't know that he's responsible for leaking information," Arthur was pointing out fairly, grimacing in pain at the gash that had still not healed properly on his left leg as the Order seemed to debate once more their feelings on the Malfoy heir.

"And we don't know that we _can_ trust him either," Remus pointed out. The Order had mostly assembled at this point, some slightly worse for wear but Albus was grateful that for once there had been a major battle with no fatalities on their side.

There was the usual murmur of disagreement and argument that usually surrounded any of their debates and Albus allowed all of them to speak for a moment, silently balancing what each of them was saying and trying to gauge who was the most objective.

Ginny Weasley was hotly defending Draco; the two of them had become quite close over last two years now and Albus was not surprised that she would defend the person that she loved.

Conversely, Remus was condemning both sides. The poor man had lost a lot in his life and it had made it almost impossible for him to trust. While he respected the reasons for the man's caution, he knew that he was being swayed just as much by emotion as Ginny.

"Look, does it really matter right now how this information got out?" Hermione asked. "Maybe we have a spy, maybe Voldemort is just being careful and it's simply an odd coincidence but the point is, we got Harry out of Azkaban for a reason and I think that we need to act now before it's too late. I don't think we have a lot of time to waste."

There was a cheer of agreement and a few people were even clapping their hands. Albus nodded, "I think Miss Granger is quite right. It's essential for us to get this Horcrux and whether we want to admit it or not, Harry's help is needed in that venture."

"But for him to help us, we have to give him back his wand," Remus pointed out. "Are we absolutely positive that we want to do that?"

"Potter is a powerful wizard, but he's four years out of practice with OWL level skills. He's weakened from Azkaban and he's outnumbered. I know it's a mistake to underestimate a potential enemy, but I think we also have to realistic," Tonks pointed out. Albus nodded his agreement. Harry was powerful, but not unbeatable.

"Er...I hate to be the bearer of bad news but how do we even know that he'll help us? He gave information, but that's a lot different than going into a cave designed by You-Know-Who and actively betraying his master," Neville pointed out.

"The boy is after saving his own skin. We'll tell him he'll have a shot at parole," Alastor pointed out.

"We don't really have that authority," Arthur pointed out with a frown.

"He doesn't know that," Alastor countered with a smirk.

"He might want to help us anyway," Fred argued with a bit of glare in old Auror's direction.

"Or he might try and sell us out to protect his master. There's no telling what a wizard will do once they go dark," Remus answered gravely.

"He didn't lie to us about the Death Eaters using our own fighting techniques against us, I don't think he was lying about the rest of it either," Hermione insisted.

"Oh don't be so naïve Hermione! You really think that Harry gives a damn about any of us?" Neville burst out in uncharacteristic scorn.

"I think Harry cares about a lot more than you're giving him credit for," Ron pointed out quietly.

"Enough," Albus finally said, his voice not raised but firm and the assembled crowd fell silent. "We cannot know what Harry will do but perhaps the time has come to give him a bit of our faith. It's surprising what belief in a person can inspire them to become. Harry turned away from us partly, I believe, because he felt that we never helped him when he needed it. I was the one that placed him with the Dursleys-"

"You didn't know," Remus began.

"But I should have," Albus interrupted firmly, "I know what a life of hardship and spite can do to a person. I know that a person requires love and understanding to grow - I deprived Harry of both. I sent him to an abusive household and then was surprised when he resented me for it. I am not excusing his behavior," Albus said raising his hand mildly as several objections were about to be raised, "But I do understand it. Harry has made many mistakes, but that should not erase the fact that he has done several commendable things in his life as well. Things that we have tended to overlook these past few years. Harry has always had a great capacity for goodness - I suggest that we allow that quality a chance to reassert its self rather than stifle it."

There was slight murmur of agreement, unenthusiastic but present. Albus could only hope that he was not allowing his own guilt to cloud his judgement. He was not lying when he had said that he was to blame for sending Harry to the Dursleys. Harry had once overcome possession and darkness with his ability to love and yet Dumbledore had stifled that feeling by insisting the boy return to a home that he despised. He should have known better. He could have prevented the path that Harry had been steered down by a lifetime of large and small cruelties. He wasn't sure if he was suggesting kindness towards Harry because he thought it might actually steer back towards the right path, to enable him to keep control over himself or simply as a means to make up for the torture and pain that he had inflicted on the boy for so long. In the end, perhaps it didn't matter, as Dumbledore had always preached on the importance on kindness and he felt it was about time that he actually demonstrated it to a young man that deserved it - needed it - more than most.

HPHPHPHP

The Order, with the exception of Mad-eye and Daniel Myers who remained behind to help the remaining Aurors, arrived back at Grimmuald Place in its usual state of chaos and disorganization. The portrait of Wulburga Black was screaming and wailing and the Order members - still pumped with adrenaline from the recent battle were in no mood to cater to the woman's demands. There was a confusion of yelling, laughter, missed curses and bellowed expletives- which only led to a combination of more riotous laughter and hysterical screaming from the portrait.

At some point in the melee of madness that had spontaneously occurred, Albus noticed that Harry had come out into the foyer accompanied by young Augustus. Auggie had run over enthusiastically to greet his father who had insisted on returning in order to see his son before planning to go to the hospital to see his partner. Harry stood quietly at the edge of the action - taking in the chaos around him with a calm, thoughtful expression. Emotions in the corridor were running high. Grief was battling with the euphoria of surviving. People were alternately crying and laughing and Harry observed the action with a kind of longing that Albus could not quite identify.

"Mummy!" a high pitched voice squealed loudly over the din. The noise in the room was so great that the cry only attracted the attention of a few but sure enough Tonks was one of them. Her hair instantly changed to a bright bubble-gum pink and her mouth actually stretched wider to accommodate her broad grin. The small boy was at the very top of the large spiral staircase, where the banister rails overlooked the long drop down towards the foyer.

"Teddy!" Tonks called back at him, "Have you been a good boy? Mummy missed you."

Teddy nodded happily in answer to his mother's question and leaned his small body up against the railing - which suddenly gave way even against the boy's slight weight.

Time seemed to freeze. While the noise of the room had practically buried Teddy's happy call in the din, Tonks' horrified scream seemed to silence everything else.

In a room filled with trained fighters and skilled wizards, no one seemed to find the ability to move. Even Albus, who had faced much worse troubles, seemed helpless to do anything as he watched in petrified horror as the small body plummeted towards the earth.

"Get out of the way!" came a rough cry and several people were jostled about as Harry ran with a diving leap, barely making it time, but catching Teddy securely in his arms at the last possible second. The force of the fall knocked them both to the ground and judging from the noise that the impact made and the large grunt of air and pain, Harry had had the wind knocked out of him.

There was a stunned moment of silence as the Order looked at the pair on the ground. Harry was still struggling to get his breath back after taking the full weight of Teddy onto his chest. Teddy was looking down at his savior with a stunned glance - he didn't seem to know if he should be crying yet and was still gauging the situation before he fully decided to commit himself to such distress.

Tonks was trembling, her eyes still trained a few feet above the ground as though still seeing the vision of her beloved son just about to crash into the ground and still unsure why the impact had not occurred yet.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Remus cried out in terror as he ran towards the boys, his arms raised, appearing for a moment as though he might strike. His face was stark white, his eyes wide and filled with fear. The pain in his expression was evident. Remus had walked away from his wife and child to protect them, so the idea of the boy being hurt (or worse) due to nothing but a mere freak accident appeared to be beyond his comprehension.

Teddy blinked up at the harsh voice before promptly giving into his original instinct and bursting into tears. It was at this time that Harry seemed to regain control of himself, his face shifting into one of anger as he quickly climbed to his feet and roughly pulled Teddy behind him, facing off against the older man in a defensive stance.

"I'm warning you, Remus, if you hurt him, I will kill you," he spoke in low, guttural tone and there was nothing but bleak sincerity in his words. There was a sharp intake of breath around the room. Harry's face was set, his eyes hard and cold.

The werewolf was so taken aback by the implication that he had frozen for a moment, too surprised to react at first before anger flooded his features.

"I would never hurt him!" Remus shouted out, enraged at even the implication - especially considering the source.

"You already have," Harry said quietly. "You can do what you want to me, but I'm warning you now - if you hurt him, I will make you pay," his voice trembled ever so slightly.

"I think he's a hell of a lot better off with Remus than someone like you!" Ginny shouted out in anger.

"That's hardly helping things at the moment Gin," George muttered.

"I think it's a bit strange that the railing suddenly gives way the day Potter comes into the house, don't you?" Draco questioned suddenly from the doorway. His statement had been all the more unexpected because no one had seen him come into the room.

"You were the one that was supposed to be watching him, where were you all this time Malfoy?" Ron pointed out.

"I've been watching Potter the whole time…with the exception of having to go to the bathroom. It wasn't a long time, but…well Potter never needed much time to get himself into loads of trouble, did he?"

Harry's jaw clenched at this statement but he didn't bother correcting anything the other man said. Albus wondered what motivated the silence; was Draco being truthful and Harry had no defense or…the more likely version in his mind, did Harry just think that anything that he had to say would be dismissed out of hand.

Teddy was still crying and clinging desperately to the back of Harry's legs. The boy had clearly chosen his side in the standoff. A fact that had not escaped anyone in the room.

"Harry…" Hermione said gently. She had raised both of her hands and was approaching her former-friend as though she expected him to lash out at any moment. "Remus wouldn't hurt Teddy. He was just scared and he lashed out."

" _He_ was scared! What about Teddy? Don't you think he was scared?" Harry asked with a definite edge to his voice. He turned slightly and pulled the boy into his arms. The toddler grasped both his small, cubby arms around Harry's neck, burrowing his tear-streaked face into his shoulder.

"Harry…it's alright," Hermione said uncertainly. "You don't have to protect Teddy from us, no one wants to hurt him."

Harry swallowed as his eyes darted nervously around the room. Hermione had caught what the rest of them had failed to fully understand. Harry was acting out of pure fear. He was in survival mode and had jumped to defend himself - and more importantly the boy - when he thought that they were in danger. Remus blinked in surprise, suddenly understanding where Harry's comment had come from.

Albus finally stepped forward with his own hands raised slightly in a placating gesture, "Harry, the railing was an accident and Remus yelled because he was upset and scared for Teddy - just as you were."

"He didn't have to scare him like that," he argued, licking his lips nervously as he continued to survey the room.

"Do you really think that any of us want to hurt a small boy, Harry? Tonks' son?" Albus questioned sadly.

Harry looked up at him slowly and Albus could see that his eyes were a pool of certainty and fear, "People are capable of anything…and none of you have seemed to care very much about how kids are treated in the past." The words cut Albus like a knife. The blood wards had seemed so important at the time but what if it had been that decision that had destroyed everything? What if it had been Albus that had given Tom his greatest weapon of all?

"Teddy is safe now, and that's thanks to you," Albus said gently.

"Thank you Harry," Tonks finally said, her voice faint. She seemed almost oblivious to everything that had just occurred. At the sound of her voice, Harry's face finally softened.

"Of course Tonks…I would never let anything bad happen to Teddy. Not if I could stop it, I mean," he added quietly.

"Harry's so cool," Auggie stated with definitive conviction. "He's the best - and super nice Tonks!"

Alex Gwynn, a newer member and one that had not known Harry apart from the stories he had heard looked startled that his son seemed well enough acquainted with the felony to have formed an opinion but for the moment did not seem to know what to say.

Harry seemed to have calmed down, his feet came slowly together so that he was no longer poised to either attack or run from a threat, and his eyes were no longer fierce and angry. "Er…sorry," he said, slightly abashed in Remus' direction. "I suppose I acted before I really thought about it. Bad habits you know."

There was a bit of an awkward silence. The tension just barely diffused.

"So not planning on doing anyone else in then?" Fred asked with a bit of wink. The matching smile slowly dissolved when Harry turned to him with cold eyes. "I wouldn't say that. I don't want to hurt anyone, but I wasn't bluffing - if anyone hurts Teddy, or Auggie for that matter, I will kill them."

This was met with a still silence. Auggie was still smiling up at his newfound hero, apparently unconcerned with what he had just said but Harry's former classmates were staring at him with emotions ranging from anger and betrayal to sadness and outright pity.

Harry had turned his attention to Teddy, his entire demeanor changing, he lowered his gaze to the boy's face, gently stroking the boy's head, and when he spoke his voice was gentle and soft. "It's alright now, mate. You were brave after falling down all that way. You know something?"

Teddy was shaking his head and still crying, he had become rather inconsolable at the sound of so many raised voices and such deep-seated tension. Harry bounced him about for a moment, calmly stroking his hair and telling him that it would be alright until he repeated his question. "Hey, guess what I think?"

"What?" Teddy asked childishly, rubbing tears from his face with balled up fists.

"You know how you said that you didn't think that you would like Quidditch because it was high up and you were worried that you were going to fall? Well not only do I think you don't have worry about that anymore but I think we found out that you would make the perfect Beater."

"Really?" the small boy asked wide-eyed at this sudden change in conversation.

"Oh absolutely, you're already a human bludger. You're right heavy, you know," Harry told him, rubbing his chest and giving an exaggerated grimace of pain.

Teddy giggled and in his extreme delight his appearance transformed to match the image of his latest hero. The small metamorphamagus now had wild black hair and an innocent face with bright green eyes.

Harry held Teddy out with his arms and when he swung him high over his head, the Azkaban inmate suddenly looked like the teenager that he actually was. It had been almost too easy to forget. Harry had been gone for so long and held himself with such restraint that he appeared much older. Now, for the first time since being out of Azkaban, he appeared young and happy.

He looked very much like James Potter.

Albus could see that he wasn't the only one that could see the sudden striking resemblance between Harry and his late father. It was true that his time in prison had had an impact on his development. Harry was shorter than his father had been, thinner from being malnourished, pale from never seeing the sun. However, when he smiled he still shared the small impish charisma that his father had always had.

Remus abruptly walked out of the room.

Albus was sure that he understood the younger man's problem. He had spent the last four years thinking about how Harry had betrayed them all. Certain that he was evil. Evil was an easy thing to hate; people that were misguided and angry were a bit harder to condemn, but Remus Lupin had spent too long placing Harry in the role of the enemy to see him as any kind of victim.

 **A/N: Thank you once again to everyone that reviewed. For those of you that have consistently read this and suddenly find a great improvement in the quality of grammar and writing and are wondering if in the past week I finally took the time to master the English language (which is in fact my first and only language so no excuses) the answer is no. Instead I found someone better than me to do that so a very, very big thank you to mylittlehazmat for her amazing help.**

 **Hope this clears up how Dumbledore feels about everything. To be honest I'm not a big fan of the 'evil Dumbledore' idea. I don't see Dumbledore as a person that intentionally sets out to make Harry's life miserable because he is callous or because he wants power and recognition for himself. However, he often makes the fatal mistake of assuming that he is the only person with the answers and chooses to weigh the good of the many over the good of the few. In this he genuinely believes that the Horcrux in Harry's head is influencing his behavior but rather than do anything to help him his solution is really along the lines of 'Harry was always going to have die anyway...'**


	13. Pick Your Poison

**Chapter 13: Pick Your Poison**

Ginny rolled over and shook Draco on his shoulder, "Wake up, you have to go."

"Ahh, it's still dark out Gin, come back to bed," Draco's voice was muffled from the pillows and gruff with sleep.

"You know my mum, if she catches us together, she'll literally murder you and mount your head on a stick to warn any future men away from my bed." Hiding their nighttime activities usually wasn't a problem as Ginny was easily able to sneak out of the Burrow and spend the night in Draco's room here at Grimmauld Place, where he had taken to staying when it became apparent he didn't have enough money for a flat of his own after he had walked away from his family. However, after the attack and the imminent mission for the Horcrux the next day, most of the Order members had decided that the most prudent thing to do was to simply stay at Headquarters for the night. With the rest of her family now in the same house, she was edgy about being caught in the same bed as a boy she had not even officially admitted to dating yet.

Draco groaned again into the pillows but did pull himself together this time. He raked his hand through his usually tidy, blond hair and looked at her with only one eye open as he leaned heavily on one arm.

"You know this is ridiculous, right? You're a grown woman for Merlin's sake, you should get to sleep with anyone you bloody well please."

Ginny inwardly sighed. Draco was constantly insecure about how her family felt about him. It was a strange thing, being with someone that could be so outwardly arrogant but was actually very insecure. It was a trait that she found secretly endearing, having a part of him that the rest of the world didn't see,ut before daylight hours it could be rather annoying. "This isn't about you Draco, I swear. My mum is just old-fashioned. She wouldn't want to think about me having sex with anyone, definitely not before I'm married and probably then only to procreate," she rolled her eyes a bit trying to make a joke of it.

Draco frowned, "I didn't actually take it personally until now. I meant that as an adult you shouldn't have to have a signed permission slip from mummy saying you're allowed to fuck now."

Ginny's hand swung out and slapped him- _hard_ \- across the face, "Don't you dare talk to me like that or I might just never _fuck_ _**you**_ again."

Draco glared at her a minute, his face gearing up for a vicious fight, before he suddenly relented, "that was out of line, but in my defense, it is fucking early," he said with a wide yawn, rubbing his face as his head fell back once more on the pillow. Ginny smiled in spite of herself. She and Draco had always shared a rather volatile relationship. Both of them had short, fast tempers, both could be easily offended when it came to their pride, both of them were used to getting their way and liked having the last word. It made for frequent fights and great sex.

"Too early to fuck, you mean?" she asked seductively, crawling over so that her small body was hovering over his, her mouth inches from his own.

Draco grinned and pulled her down towards himself, "Never," he growled into her ear, flipping her roughly onto her back. The next several minutes were a blur. Ginny was once again thankful that she had placed a permanent silencing charm around the room that she used when staying at Grimmauld Place quite some time ago. On occasion, she and Draco could be fast but they were never quiet.

Ginny was breathing heavily, her legs still trembling slightly when she suddenly laughed. "What?" Draco groused.

"Oh, it's not really funny I guess. I really don't know why I even thought about it, but it just occurred to me that Harry is never going to know what this feels like. Being with someone I mean."

Draco frowned at her, "you're having sex with me and thinking about Potter? I think you just made me live out my greatest fear from when I fifteen."

Ginny laughed and slapped his chest lightly but Draco sat up and started to hunt around for his missing clothing. It took her moment to realize that he was actually upset which caused her to shake her head as she sat up in the bed as he moved around the room. "Oh come on, shut it! This should be like a fantasy come true for you. Not only do we have each other, your old rival is alone. Forever. He will never have something like this." She crawled to the edge of her bed and grabbed his robes away before he could pull them on, kissing him again. This time Draco smirked at her. "So that's what gets you off, Weasley? Knowing your enemies are left unfulfilled while you're…not."

Ginny rolled her eyes, "You don't have to make it sound like that. You make me sound like a pervert. I just meant that I've never really given it any thought before but Harry is going to actually die a virgin."

Draco smirked, "Well, I wouldn't go that far."

Ginny leaned back, confused by the sudden spark in Draco's eyes. He looked oddly satisfied. She unfortunately recognized that look from Draco, it was the thing that she hated most about him. The one trait that he had kept from his younger years as a relentless bully - the joy he took from other people's pain.

"What are you talking about?" she asked suspiciously.

Draco rolled his eyes, "Come on Gin, you can't possibly be that naïve. Think about it, right? Potter was sent to Azkaban when he was fifteen after proving that he can't defend himself without magic. Now that the Dementors are mostly gone the prisoners are almost forced to have a lot more contact with each other and Potter was locked up with some of the roughest criminals out there. Honestly…what do you think happened?"

Ginny gaped aimlessly for a moment, she supposed that she had been naïve but it had never been something that she had thought about before. In truth, rape wasn't a crime that was discussed very openly in the Wizarding World, particularly when it came to happening to _men_.

"You don't really think…Harry?"

Draco shrugged casually but eyed her reaction carefully when he asked her, "Do you care?"

Ginny flushed with anger, "Don't turn this around on me like that! I don't care about Harry! I'm glad that he's in Azkaban and you know that I think that he deserves to be locked up after everything that he did. I followed him to the Ministry that night without a second thought because I _trusted_ him and he was using me all along. I will never forgive him for that. But that doesn't mean that I think that it's right for anyone to be…be raped Draco! I mean come on! That's…that is just way over the line." The idea was horrifying to her.

Draco was quiet and Ginny suspected that he was thinking about his father. She knew that Harry had been lying about Draco visiting Lucius, she more than anyone knew that Draco had painfully and permanently cut his father out of his life. Draco had loved his father. More than that, he had idolized him. It had been difficult to turn his back on someone that was not only family but a role model to him as well.

But he had.

He had done it because he knew that what his father believed in was wrong and he was working to be a better person than that. He would never be a Death Eater.

Ginny had witnessed firsthand how much pain the decision to break away from that family had been for Draco and she resented the fact that Harry had casually thrown out that Draco was guilty without any proof at all. Draco, who had sat up with her on long nights and told her how he had worked for years to gain his father's approval only to realize that he would never have it. He had been open with her in a way that she had never experienced and that more than anything else had cemented in her mind just how wrong she had always been about Harry.

What she had always taken as stoicism or even a shyness had been pure evasiveness. He had never shared his thoughts or feelings with her. And as much as it pained her to admit, she knew that that had been his right. He had never owed her his secrets but the fact that he had kept all of them to himself, sharing them with no one at all, showed her that he had never truly cared for any of them.

"Azkaban is a rough place Gin," Draco finally said quietly. "Maybe…" he hesitated but after a moment of looking at her face he continued speaking, "Maybe I was out of line just now. You're right, wishing something like, even on Potter, is wrong and I'm sorry…sorry that sometimes I don't let my better senses show, you know?" His face was ducked down self-consciously in that way she knew he would only let her see and it was that more than anything that made her love him. The fact that she saw this side to a man who was so cautious of showing vulnerability to others but trusted her enough to show to her.

Ginny smiled softly at him. She knew that at times it must be hard for him. She had been raised to do the right thing. Her parents had shown and taught her compassion every day of her life, and Draco had been raised to do the opposite. He had told her, during one of those special, private moments that they shared together, that concepts of right and wrong that should have been natural had been quashed out of him by his parents. Ginny understood that Draco tried to do the right thing and respected that his effort was harder than it should have had to be, and it angered her that so many of her brothers were unsympathetic. Ron in particular claimed that Draco's nastier impulses were signs of his real personality and that he was using his father as an excuse, but Ginny knew better.

Draco pulled on his robes and left quietly while Ginny was left to consider how ironic life could be at times. The boy that she had fantasied about as a young girl had turned out be nothing but a liar and a Death Eater while the boy that she had berated for being an arrogant git had turned out to be the true hero all along.

HPHPHPHP

There was a sharp crack and a shower of broken glass just as Ginny was coming down the stairs that caused her to pause cautiously, giving her the opportunity to overhear voices from the parlor room.

"No, I need to see how you both were positioned. Did he crouch or did he stand? Did he use his right hand or the left? Stand to the side or face you full-on? What was the strength of the spells?"

"I already told you, it all happened really fast and there were a dozen other people around all fighting and firing off spells. I couldn't get a clear look at anything."

"Well you need to pay attention in a fight!" came the frustrated reply and Ginny was a bit surprised to realize that it was Harry speaking.

"Actually, believe it or not, I'm aware of that much, thanks. It's not as easy as you might think," Daniel Myers answered drily.

Harry sighed, and when he spoke again, he sounded rather exasperated, "I'm not sure why you're even asking me about this then if you didn't see anything properly."

"Because you've seen every Auror recruit for the past three years and I know that you pay attention to everything. I also know that there isn't a single thing that goes on in that prison that you don't hear about. You're like the godfather of Azkaban," Daniel said with a bit of a smirk that Ginny caught sight of as she entered the room.

"Is that another muggle reference?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Really?" Daniel asked clearly taken aback that Harry didn't know this. "Maggie was one thing but you were _raised_ by muggles, I expect better from you."

"Muggles that locked me in cupboard, remember? They didn't spend loads of time teaching me cute little references." Harry asked rolling his eyes. It was strange to hear Harry talking about his relatives so casually. Seemingly unbothered by what they had done to him. Ginny was also surprised that Daniel and Harry appeared so…friendly with one another. Harry seemed to resent all Aurors these days but clearly Myers was an exception for some reason.

"Oh, well, whatever," Myers answered distractedly. "The point is, don't you have _some_ idea of who it could be? Like I said, whoever it was used some particularly nasty curses, and they were strong. I thought it might have been Bosh?"

Harry shook his head, "No I doubt it. Bosh is an arse but he's not a Death Eater."

"Which probably means that he is a Death Eater and that Harry wants to protect him because that would make them best mates," Ginny called out scathingly to draw attention to her arrival, rounding the corner so that she came into view just as she finished speaking.

Harry's face was blank. She had noticed that since his time in Azkaban it was difficult to get a reaction out of him. However, now that he had been out of prison for a couple of days he was already starting to look better overall. After a couple of night's solid rest the bags under his eyes were less pronounced, his skin slightly less pale after hours of sitting by the windows. It was strange to see that such a short amount of time away from that tiny island of despair could be so transformative.

"Morning Ginny, getting some tea for Draco while he makes the bed? It is nice when two people can split the chores, isn't it?"

Ginny's eyes widened and her head snapped automatically to the door to see if any of her family members were around. "I- I don't know what you're talking about," she sputtered, her face horrifyingly red.

Harry smirked at her, his eyes moving deliberately down her body and then up again. "Sure. And don't worry, I'm sure no one else suspects anything at all, you're fooling everyone. Fantastic job. But you know, for the record, Gin-" he glanced at her again and for a brief moment there was that familiar glint of attraction that Ginny had been fending off for years but the unexpected part was the flutter she felt in her stomach, the sweat she felt building on her palms.

"The two of you really deserve each other," he said, with a surprisingly harsh quality that took her aback. She felt the air rush out of her and her face flushed with a combination of anger and embarrassment as she realized that he had not been giving her the look that she had first assumed. Once again it had been her that had felt that inexplicable attraction she had always had for him and he still seemed to feel nothing.

"Can we focus please?" Daniel asked, clearly exasperated.

Harry shrugged, shifting slightly so that he was positioned in a way that could keep both of them in his line of vision with the wall behind himself for protection. It was something a trained Auror might have done after years of experience.

"Certainly _Auror Myers_ but there isn't a hell of a lot for me to focus on. You said that you saw someone fighting with the Death Eaters that you think is also an Auror and that he used 'particularly nasty spells,' in my mind that could be a dozen different people."

"I think there's bit of a difference between an Auror and a traitor," Ginny shot back.

"Not necessarily," Harry answered nonchalantly, seemingly unbothered with her remark. "Muggle psychologists claim that the psychological profiles on criminals and law enforcement are surprisingly similar. It's a thin line you know."

"Where did you come up with something like that?" Neville asked as he came into the room. He was dressed in casual robes but there was dirt spot on the knee; Neville had obviously been doing some early morning work in his greenhouses. He was currently working for Magical Botanical Gardens, as an assistant to Master Herbologists and was generally stuck with much of the grunt work, but Ginny knew that the former Gryffindor loved it. He was still studying for his own Masters in the subject and he had once confided in her that one day he hoped to take over Professor Sprout's job at Hogwarts.

Harry leaned a bit more casually against the wall, his tone changing from the clipped aggressive one that he had been using to one with more warmth, a tone Ginny hadn't heard from him in a long time. "My cellmate was a wicked genius. Spent his whole life studying philosophy, literature, and psychology, in both the muggle and wizarding world. I learned loads from him over the years."

"If he was as brilliant as he sounds, why was he in Azkaban?" Neville asked with a frown. Ginny gave the other boy credit, he had genuine curiosity in voice; if it had been her asking there would have only been sarcasm and distain.

Harry rubbed the corner of his mouth and looked thoughtful, "Felix was a good man. He was honest, he was hard-working, and he did loads to help his community. He spent years married to a muggle woman and raising their kids together. But when he was young," Harry shrugged, "he was a follower of Grindelwald. He thought…I guess maybe he really didn't think at the time at all, but he was on the wrong side of the war and even though it was years ago, there's no statute of limitations on war crimes."

Ginny looked at the boy that he had once thought had unbreakable morals with disgust. "Oh he sounds like a _lovely_ man. Great guy. He just also happened to kill a few dozen muggles but…" Ginny shrugged, "they weren't that important, right Harry? How can you stand there and call him a good man?"

Harry did not rise to her bait, instead he looked rather tired as he responded. "I'm not always sure what makes someone a good man Ginny. The lines are blurry at best. What I do know is that there wasn't a day that went by when Felix didn't regret what he had done, or a day that he didn't work to make up for it. He worked to make amends every single day of his life until the day that he was arrested. So what's better for the world? To have someone that is going out to and try and fix their past mistakes or for everyone to feel better because they're suffering for them?"

"What if he had been the one to kill your parents?" Neville asked skeptically. "You wouldn't want him to go to prison for that?"

Ginny laughed derisively, "Come on Neville, think about who you're talking to for a second! _You-Know-Who_ killed Harry's parents and he couldn't wait to sign up to be his own personal little bitch!"

Harry's hand snapped out too fast for Ginny to react and caught her wrist, "I'm no one's bitch Ginny- especially not Voldemort. You want to sound tough, try saying his name."

Neville pulled out his wand to defend her but Harry had deftly pulled her in front of him, effectively using her as a human shield. His eyes glinted at her malevolently, his face like stone.

Ginny gasped, even after everything he had done, Ginny had never really been afraid of Harry before. Her early morning conversation with Draco was running through her head and she regretted her choice of words. If Draco was right then Harry would have a strong reaction to being reminded of something like that. But that didn't stop her pounding heart. "Let me go," she shouted at him, struggling to pull her arm back.

"I'm getting sick of this Ginny," Harry said quietly, but his grip was still vice tight. "You've made your feelings about me quite clear, you hate me. Fine, the feeling is rather mutual but at least I can be civil to you."

"Let me go," she hissed again, her movements becoming more frantic as she scrambled back. He was surprisingly strong all things considered but he was still weak from being in Azkaban for so long and she was able to pull away.

"Lucky I didn't have my wand, someone grabs you like that without warning you might just walk away with a Dark Mark," Harry said, flexing his left arm. "Funny how fast that can happen."

Neville was eyeing Harry thoughtfully, not moving now that the immediate danger was over. Ginny and Harry were squared off against each other when Daniel spoke softly, "Harry what happened to Felix?" He was calm and somehow managed to diffuse a bit of the tension in the room and in spite of her anger Ginny was glad to have a change in topic.

Harry blinked and his expression changed. That was another thing that Ginny had noticed about the new Harry, he seemed to have trouble splitting his attention. It was as if it took all of his concentration to focus on one thing so that there was no room in his mind for anything else.

"He died," Harry answered shortly.

Daniel's face clenched, "I'm sorry Harry. Honestly. I didn't know."

Harry shrugged, "I thought that Ma-" Harry coughed, "Healer Clark might have told you about it."

"Told him about what?" Hermione asked as she came into the room with the glint that she had when she knew that she was missing something. She had just come from her shift at the Ministry and was still dressed for the office. It could be difficult at times for her and the others to juggle their professional responsibilities alongside their work for the Order but all of them had grown rather adept over the last few years at running parallel lives.

"No, Maggie never said anything to me about Felix," Daniel said, looking down awkwardly as he scratched the back of his neck. "That last month I was…busy. The Order was swamped and I didn't get a chance to check in with her the way that I normally did. Not until…well...you know."

"Oh," Ginny whispered with sudden understanding of who they were talking about and Hermione shot her a quick look. "Daniel…I'm really sorry. Hermione told me about Maggie. It's awful. You know how much I enjoyed meeting her at that pub. She really was the most brilliant person, it's such a shame."

Daniel glanced quickly at Harry and then away, apparently embarrassed to be discussing something so personal in front of an inmate that he used to oversee. "Thanks Ginny."

Harry's expression was still blank, he seemed to know that Maggie Clark had died, and considering she had been the Healer on-call at the prison during his time there she wasn't surprised, but even though he had known her, he didn't seem to have much of a reaction. Ginny found herself irrationally upset at his lack of compassion for a woman that had no doubt cared for him when he had needed it. Instead of offering his own condolences however Harry merely cleared his throat and continued with the original line of questioning. "Higgin's got him under an interrogation demo. I- I told him to use me but…well Higgins isn't exactly reasonable, is he?"

"No, he's not. Maggie did tell me once that Higgins would do anything to target people that were close to you."

Hermione frowned, "Why is that?"

Harry shrugged, his voice sounding very tired as he said, "it's a long story Hermione. Higgins and I have hated each other from day one, and Bosh- _Ginny_ ," Harry glared at her with venom for the suggestion that they were working together, "is Higgins' personal little lap dog. I wasn't protecting him, he can burn in hell for all eternity as far as I'm concerned, but I still don't think that he's a Death Eater."

A quick look at Daniel's troubled face showed that he believed everything that Harry was saying. She raised a questioning eyebrow at him and Daniel relented with an uneasy shrug of his shoulders. "Bosh nearly killed Harry, about a year ago, tortured him worse than anyone should have to stand. I was there and I thought for certain that Harry was a goner after I saw what Bosh had done, and just because Harry gave him cheek during a drill that they were doing."

Harry gave a brief snort and shook his head at this description, roughly scratching the side of his chin with a fingernail in agitation, but he said nothing else about it. Ginny frowned to herself, realizing for the first time that she really knew very little about Harry's life, or the people in it anymore. Neville was also looking troubled, no doubt sensitive to what that kind of torture could do to a person.

"I'm sorry about your friend, Harry," Hermione said quietly. "And about…Healer Clark. I'm sure the two of you must have spent time together." There was an odd note in Hermione's voice and Ginny knew the other girl well enough to recognize the fact that Hermione was saying more than her words implied. Harry looked up sharply at that but only nodded stiffly. "It's fine," he said, his voice a bit rough. He cleared his throat, his face shifting to business-like professionalism that effectively ended any further discussion. "We should get back to this," Harry said with a nod to Daniel's last demonstration of a spell. "Did they manage to actually hit you with a curse?"

"What are the two of you doing?" Hermione asked, her usual inquisitiveness asserting itself.

Daniel looked at her as he answered, "Yesterday during the attack at the Ministry I got the impression that one of the Death Eaters was actually an Auror, but the whole thing happened so fast that I couldn't really identity them. Harry has watched and learned from every recent Auror recruit and no one knows their styles better than him. He's actually a bit scary the way he knows how each of the Aurors fight. Anyway I thought that if I could describe the Death Eater's fighting technique, Harry might have an idea of who it could be."

Hermione nodded and gave Harry a thoughtful look, "That would be really impressive," she said quietly.

Harry shrugged, "Personally I have my doubts but it's worth a shot, so Dan…" he coughed before he corrected himself, "Auror Myers, did he manage to hit you?"

Daniel nodded, "Yeah, it was a strong cutting hex. Came right through my shield."

Harry nodded academically. "Show me, I want to see how everything happened."

"How?"

"Neville, you play the Auror gone Death Eater. We'd get Draco to do it but he'd probably get really confused by switching sides so many times that he'd show us his actual Dark Mark, and then Ginny would feel awkward for never thinking to do a revealing spell even after he been so _revealing_ to her."

Ginny bit back another comment with difficulty, feeling that it wasn't the time to start a fight. She didn't need to defend Draco, she knew exactly where he stood and uselessly arguing at this point would only come across as defensive. She did, however, see to her great annoyance that Neville had had to hide a grin at Harry's remark.

"Alright, now show me what happened," Harry said once they were in position.

They replayed the scene with Neville shooting off a light hex in place of a stronger one. "Alright," Harry muttered, dragging a hand across his mouth in thought, "but I need a bit more detail, was it a straight cut or did it have a bit of a rough edge to it?"

"Rough," Daniel answered at once.

"Alright, once more, Neville try and dip your wand at the last minute, alright?" Neville looked surprised at this adjustment but nodded.

"Oh and be sure to make the last syllable of the curse take on a sharper end, almost all the Aurors do it, it adds a direction."

"The pronunciation or speed of the words don't have an effect on the direction of the spell Harry," Hermione immediately argued.

Harry looked up in surprise, "Right but if you're moving quickly in a battle your wand might move before you've finished speaking. They're trained to clip the ends of the words so it's said quicker and…well, hopefully be more accurate. Didn't anyone tell you all this?"

Ginny glanced over at Hermione, knowing that if anyone had ever mentioned this fact, the studious witch would have remembered. Hermione shook her head, but looked thoughtful, the same way she usually did when attempting to absorb new information.

Harry's jaw clicked, "Well that certainly explains why you lot haven't been able to do much."

"We've done plenty," Neville shot back fiercely.

"Can we save it please," Daniel interjected quickly when it looked as though Harry was about to fire back.

Harry nodded thoughtfully, "Right. Time for that later I suppose." He let out a breath. "Show me again."

Neville fired off a second curse, this one better than the last, Ginny caught the look of startled surprise on the blond boy's face as he realized that such adjustments from Harry could improve his casting so quickly. Ginny suddenly remembered that it had been Harry that had first taught Neville to fight properly, had taught them all to fight properly. It was a sad, humiliating fact but in the seven years that she had spent at Hogwarts, Harry had probably been the best Defense teacher any of them had had. Harry's hands were thoughtfully tracing the scene in front of him, "alright, I think I'm getting a better picture but even though Neville has to go light, Daniel show me the actual shield that you used."

Daniel frowned, "That was it."

Harry's eyes widened almost comically, "I'm sorry…what?"

"It's a solid shield, Harry," Ginny said defensively, unhappy with him for mocking the Auror about the strength of his Shield when not everyone had access to the same level of power.

"And it would be fine if we were in Fourth Year and shooting off curses in the hallway, but you're an _Auror_ Daniel!" And Harry suddenly looked quite angry at the older man. "You have to be able to defend yourself properly or you're going to get hurt!" He took a slower breath and Ginny raised her eyebrows slightly at the slightly wild look in Harry's eyes. He looked strangely desperate concerning the Auror's safety and Ginny could not understand the compulsion that he would have to protect a man that was supposed to be his enemy.

"Quite concerned about him, aren't you, Potter?" Draco asked, his eyebrow arching slightly as he entered the room, coming to stand at Ginny's side.

"I can see why the concept of caring for others would be lost on you, Malfoy," Harry answered dryly.

"Oh, I happen to think that's more than a little suspicious as to _why_ you have this concern. You and Myers know each other from Azkaban...but you certainly seem to be rather close, don't you? Strange but Myers never mentioned you even once during the entire time that we were planning on bringing you here. Something to hide? Just how _well_ do you really know one another?" he asked with a look that was a bit too innocent.

Daniel flushed slightly, though he looked to be more indignant than embarrassed while Harry only gave him a cool look back.

"Draco," Ginny hissed in quiet reprimand. She had always quite liked Daniel. Right from the start he had always seemed to be one of the most genuine people she had ever known, and she didn't like the idea that Draco would use the Auror's compassion against him.

"I'm only asking a question, Gin," Draco answered back easily. His voice was light and casual but Ginny noticed that his eyes were not as warm as they usually were when they looked at Daniel. Instead he was giving the older man a cold stare that showed he would get his answers no matter how hard he needed to press.

After a moment Daniel sighed, "Potter and I know each other from the Training Program. I decided I wanted to be an Auror in my Fifth Year and when the war started I only wanted it more. I love my job, I love being able to help people...but I hated how we were taught to do it. It wasn't right and every day I would go into work and wonder if I should quit. Wonder if I wasn't worse than the criminals that I was supposed to go after. Potter...he was always decent enough to me and was he always there to take punishment for the other prisoners. I respect him for that.

"But that doesn't mean that I trust everything that he says or that we have a close relationship. We don't," he added, with a glance at the convict that was almost apologetic. "The two of us aren't friends and that's why I never mentioned knowing him before he actually arrived at Headquarters. It wasn't relevant. There wasn't anything I could tell you about him that would affect how we could approach him and there wasn't anything I felt about him that changed the fact that we still need to work with a man that none of us can trust."

Neville, Ron and Hermione all turned to look at Harry as though they expected him to say something in response to that but he stayed silent. He did not look offended or surprised by the Auror's words but hisexpression looked slightly pinched as though weary of having the same discussions again and again. Harry had only been around for three days but the subject of his arrest and the fact that he was no longer trusted by them was beginning to feel exhausting.

"Are we done here?" Harry asked his voice flat.

"Wait," Neville interrupted. "Harry...can you show us how you make a stronger shield charm?"

Draco looked at his former classmate as though he had he had inhaled too much dragon dung fertilizer and perhaps he had because Ginny could not believe that Neville would ask Harry for advice.

Harry looked at the other boy blankly for a moment and Ginny half expected the next sentiment out of his mouth would be for him to tell them to fuck off but instead he only nodded.

He moved to stand beside Myers, "You have to extend your arm out faster and snap the wrist quickly. If your movements are tight and fluid than your magic is going to realize that you're in trouble. Defense is built partially on emotion. Survival. Like accidental magic sometimes…you get lucky but you have to force it along."

Harry imitated what he was talking about without a wand and Ginny was almost positive that if it hadn't been for the magical restraints still on Harry's wrists he would have produced at least a partial shield even without a wand. He winced sharply as though the magic had been constrained when he had tried to use it, but he shook his arm subtly and said nothing about it.

Daniel tried the same movement but there was not much change. Harry directed his arm, muttering a few corrections, adding, "You have to want it. I know it sounds morbid but you have to think about the fact that if you don't do it right, you'll die. Or if that's not enough, think about the fact that someone else could die," he added and Ginny saw Hermione's eyes widen slightly at his words as though they meant something more to her.

It was clear that Harry had in fact studied the Auror's training closely the past few years and knew what he was talking about. And there was no denying that he was as powerful as Dumbledore had speculated. She felt Draco shift next to her and she wondered if his thoughts echoed hers, that if Harry had been a stronger person, their side would have not only had a strong fighter but one that would helped improve them all.

"Here, go again," Harry said, gesturing for the Auror to try again.

Daniel glared slightly as they had now tried this four or five times but did as he was instructed and was rewarded by a dark blue shield which erupted from his wand, creating a nearly solid dome.

"How did you learn to do that?" Neville asked, apparently as impressed with Harry's skill as she was. "It can't just have been the Auror classes or Daniel would have known all of that as well."

Harry's cold expression didn't waver as he responded, "You never seemed to wonder when everyone wanted me to teach the DA. When enough people want to kill you, you either learn to defend yourself or you wind up dead."

Hermione was still looking thoughtfully at Harry, she looked as if she wanted to say something that she couldn't put into words.

"I think it might be either Calahan or Mulligan," Harry suddenly threw in.

"Really?" Daniel asked surprised.

Harry nodded, "I know what you're thinking, they're both quiet and neither one seems to have any strong political ideas."

"Not to mention the fact that they're both incredibly stupid," Daniel added.

Harry shook his head, "Not as much as you think. They don't think outside the box and they would never come up with a master plan on their own but they can follow an order. Similar to Crabbe and Goyle, actually. Makes for great lackeys. Why do you think Higgins loves them? Brainless morons, the pair of them, but loyal and eager to prove themselves to someone that gives them free reign. They're stupid but they know enough to know realize where the best opportunities lie for them, and Voldemort must have offered them something they didn't think they could get from the Aurors."

"And what would that be?" Hermione asked.

Harry shrugged, "I would say the chance to use as many violent spells and cause as much pain as they could, since that always seemed what they wanted the most, but the Ministry already gave them that. Maybe the chance for Purebloods to be on top? Maybe Voldemort made them feel special? I don't know but I do know that, if they were given specific orders they would carry them out. They follow like lemmings whomever they think is going to reward them most. Tyson molded them that way and Voldemort benefited from it."

"Harry, I know your opinion on Aurors isn't high but we _need_ to follow orders. I think you're reaching on this one," Daniel disagreed.

"You follow orders, but not without question, and definitely not without reservation. You can see it in your eyes even when you don't say it out loud. Why do you think that Higgins always had it in for you? He knew what you thought of him and he hated it, because you knew what a scumbag he is. But rather than take a look at himself and become a half-way decent human being, he decided that you weren't a solid Auror."

Daniel frowned and Ginny could see that he was putting the pieces together. After a moment he gave a snort of dry amusement, "You could have mentioned this when I was still a recruit, Higgins always had it in for me."

"Oh, I'm so sorry that I didn't encourage you to take pleasure in cursing and torturing me just so you didn't have to do midnight patrol duty."

Hermione awkwardly cleared her throat, "But why do you think that these two might be Death Eaters? According to you, there are plenty of Aurors that are corrupt without siding with Voldemort, so why them specifically?"

"Because Calahan and Mulligan resented Higgins' authority too- they were just better at hiding it than people like Myers, who wanted to see the best in his superior officers and was just disappointed when he learned that the people he had looked up to his whole life used torture and intimidation to get what they wanted. Calahan and Mulligan though, they hated him because they didn't think that Higgins was the _right kind_ of asshole to follow. Not pureblood enough, not powerful enough, not good enough to have to submit to. Oh they were nice enough to his face, even though they hated him, but not because he's a sadistic bastard that gets off on torture and er…" Harry coughed, "pain. They actually thought that he didn't go far enough. They had this…arrogance to them. They thought that they were better than everyone else because they had this secret between the two of them- and I think that it's that they had a better master to serve."

"Can you prove any of this?" Neville asked skeptically.

"Do you mean did Voldemort send me his latest Death Eater newsletter with all the new recruits listed on it while we did our secret best friend handshake? No. I don't have any proof and I'm not even certain about it myself. Myers wanted to know which past recruits might be Death Eaters, and I'm giving you my best guess."

Myers nodded, his expression still thoughtful. Ginny was still surprised that the Auror had bothered to ask for Harry's help at all. She didn't understand the odd friendship that the two of them seemed to have. From the start, Daniel had afforded Harry every courtesy, even bordering on respect towards the convict and Harry, while still wary of the authoritative role that Myers had, seemed to genuine like the other man far more than just about anyone else.

"There you are!" Moody shouted out, interrupting Ginny's thoughts and any arguments that might have been made against Harry's assessment. "Meeting's set to start and not all of us have all day to sit around and stare at one another. Get moving."

Hermione jumped at the command, and Myers stiffened his posture in the presence of a man that in some respects could be considered a superior, retired or not. Harry's reaction was the most telling. His face hardened at the sharpness of tone and the way he stiffened made it seem as though he was steeling himself for punishment. His fists had tightened, but not, Ginny noticed, as though he was about to go for a wand as most wizards would have done. She could only suppose that after years of not having it in situations of duress the instinct had faded. Nevertheless he moved to follow the ex-Auror without complaint or protest. The rest of them merely shuffled forward. It was time to reveal all their secrets and hope they weren't making a terrible mistake.

 **A/N: Thanks once again for all of your reviews and comments. Special thanks to mylittlehazmat for editing once again, your help is amazing and very much appreciated.**

 **Next chapter: The pace is finally going to pick up a bit when Harry finally learns about the existence of Horcruxes and discovers a bit more than Dumbledore than he bargained for. What will his reaction be when he realizes how much the Order needs him? Is Harry truly the Chosen One- or will he choose to let them fend for themselves as they chose for him?**

 **Edit: My apologizes, I am often technology inept and I accidentally uploaded the wrong version of this chapter. No content changes at all but this is much improved edited edition**


	14. Dumbledore's Dirty Secret

**Chapter 14: Dumbledore's Dirty Secret**

Hermione hurried to take her seat, somewhat ashamed of herself for reacting like a startled schoolgirl at Mad-Eye's reprimand. She was a grown woman, she didn't need to be scolded like a child, and yet the idea of bending to an authority figure was too ingrained for her to break. There had been a period of rebellion in her, during her Fifth Year when the Ministry had overstepped and Umbridge had abused her authority but refused to actually teach them anything, in which she had risen up against them.

It had been her idea to start a secret club where they could learn defense, her idea to convince Harry to teach them and then to continue when it had been banned by an Educational Decree. She had been so certain that she knew better than those placed in charge, by simple reason of their blatant corruption. It had led her to actions she would have never dreamed of taking as wide-eyed eleven year old in her First Year, completely convinced that teachers- all authority figures, really- knew best.

In a different world, Hermione might have become a true crusader. Righting the deep seated prejudices of the Wizarding World and remembering that doing the right thing and keeping with what was the established legal precedent were not always the same thing, and there was no question of which she should be obliged to follow. But after her questioning at the Ministry, after Harry's trial and during the intervening years since that moment, she had learned that her judgment was not absolute. That good people could be led down a dark path and once a line was crossed there was no coming back from it. Harry had not always been a monster, he was the boy that convinced herself and Ron to fight against Voldemort with his passion for justice. He had been genuine, then, in his desire to set things right but somehow over time he had lost sight of what was important.

Now, she had felt as though there were two halves of herself at war with one another. One side was the woman that carried on secret affairs with her superior, even while lying to him about her extracurricular activities. This was the girl that struggled to keep her head down at the Ministry and try and advance as quietly as possible even if the mere fact that she was a muggleborn often made it nearly impossible, because her personal advancement should matter more than making things easier for the next generation of muggleborns. The other half was so afraid of slipping and becoming the very thing she despised the most that she was determined to follow every rule and restriction that was set upon her. And yet it was this side of her that still submitted reports about abuses against werewolves and tried to draft legislation for protections for House-elves. The war inside herself could be exhausting.

When she entered the room, dignified and poised once again, she noticed that Harry had taken his now customary seat by the window. His posture was a bit stiffer than it had been moments before when he had been around a smaller group of people that he knew well. However, he seemed to be quickly adjusting and assumed his usual state of composure. She had been watching him closely that morning and was tentatively happy about what she had seen. Harry had been little more than a walking corpse the past couple of days, the reports of depression from the Ministry confirmed in his expression and in his actions. There had since been brief sparks of life, particularly his condemnation of Remus for abandoning Teddy, which had surprised her. She had expected a certain level of hostility when she and Ron had gone to speak with him. In fact, she had half expected him to refuse their offer immediately out of sheer vindictiveness. Instead there hadn't been hostility, but genuine, if contained, anger over their refusal to see him after all this time and indignation for a boy that he didn't even know.

As much as she continually tried to understand her own split personality, she was finding it nearly impossible to reconcile the conflicting personas she saw in Harry. Unlike Ginny, who had convinced herself that everything that they had ever known about Harry had been a lie from the start, Hermione had always known that Harry had once been a good person and a great friend. She had sat with him day after day during their school years playing with him, talking with him, crying over him. The kindness and loyalty that he had shown her for five years could not have been a lie and it was a point she had argued several times with members of the Order before the mere mention of Harry had become taboo among them.

But she was starting to see that she had been little better than Ginny in regards to making a fair assessment of Harry's character. She had had the shallow assumption that now that he had become a Death Eater all of his former humanity was dead. However, just as she knew that he had not been faking her friendship to her when they were children, he had not been faking his concern for Daniel a few moments ago, nor his sincere desire to help all of them catching the rogue Aurors. It was the motivations behind that help that was troubling her. It was of course possible that Harry felt no loyalty to either group- the Order or the Death Eaters- and was merely prepared to help whomever gave him the best deal. But that seemed like a very simple answer and if there was one thing Hermione had learned about Harry when they had been children, it was that he was not one to have simple answers.

Ron ran in slightly out of breath before visibly relaxing and moving to take the seat that he been occupying for the past three days, right between her and Harry. As he sat down, he muttered to her, "These double hours are killing me. Don't know you're managing it, I heard that Thurston Grey is a real slave driver."

Hermione sputtered in surprise for a moment before she realized that he was referring to her job and not more...intimate encounters. She and Thurston were a secret that was potentially career destroying for either one of them and yet strangely for the split second in which she had been convinced that Ron had been casually referring to her affair, it had been the horror of thinking that _Ron_ would know about what she had been doing that had most terrified her.

"There's...a lot of take-home work at times, but as long as it gets done, it's not as bad as you might imagine," she answered faintly. Ron nodded, not listening particularly closely to her answer since he had largely just been complaining about their busy schedules rather than genuinely interested in the finer points of her work but she noticed Harry glance at her as though he had noticed her tension in the reply. She felt a shiver of déjà vu before brushing aside the strange familiarity of Ron both addressing her and not caring for her answers and Harry picking up more than he was originally interested in knowing.

"Did I miss anything?" Ron asked.

Hermione leaned slightly towards him as she answered quietly, "Daniel thinks that a few of the Death Eaters in the attack yesterday were Aurors and he was trying to see if Harry could identify them based on their fighting style."

Ron's eyebrows shot up at that and he turned quickly to look at Harry, "You can tell that just by having someone describe to you their style?"

Harry shrugged, "I can guess. I mean obviously the Aurors are all trained similarly, so it's hard to really get a firm picture, but everyone has their own stance and posture. Their own curses and hexes that they prefer to use. It would have been better if we had a pensieve or something where I could see it for myself, hearing it second-hand makes it harder."

"I thought you sounded pretty sure of who you thought it was?" Hermione asked, flushing slightly when she realized that she had sounded accusing when she had honestly only curious. If Harry was offended though he didn't choose to acknowledge it, instead he only shrugged, "I told you, it was my best guess. I couldn't swear I was certain though."

There were a few last minute stragglers that were keeping the meeting from starting. Tonks had come in with a clumsy bang as a chair toppled over and grumbling that her mother was supposed to have been able to mind Teddy for the day but had cancelled at the last minute. One of the newer recruits was complaining to Alastor Moody about some of the newer time keeping procedures that had come through the Ministry and why it had been getting harder for many of them to make these frequent meetings. Charlie had come back from St. Mungo's and seemed to be good shape, but he was currently arguing with his boyfriend, Alex Gwynn; both were speaking lowly enough that it was hard to make out what they were saying.

No one appeared to be in a hurry to start and Hermione felt a sting of annoyance at the way Moody had corralled them inside as though they had been wasting his time when now they were being kept waiting. However, if she was annoyed, Malfoy was downright irritated. He pulled out his gold pocket watch, the only thing he had kept from his family's inheritance as it was considered one of the most sacred of Wizard Traditions and something that he had been unable to part with even after he had walked away from his family. "I thought this was supposed to be an early meeting," he muttered in clear agitation.

"Oh that's right, we must be keeping you from visiting hours, isn't that a shame," Harry asked as he consulted a fake watch on his wrist, "Tell Daddy I said hello, yeah?"

"Harry…" Neville said warningly.

"Oh right, sorry Neville it's rude of mention things in conversation when not everyone knows what you're talking about. You see 'visiting hours' is this thing that Azkaban has where family and _friend_ s can come and see you. I can see where you all might be confused by the term because apparently none of you were aware that such a thing existed."

"That's not fair, Harry," Hermione said in a shaky voice. She had missed Harry terribly after he had been sent to Azkaban, but he had made his choices and she had made hers and she didn't regret those decisions.

"You're right Hermione, turning your back on someone that was supposed to be your best friend isn't fair." She had been right, Harry was definitely more animated this morning.

"You turned your back on us first Harry!" Ginny cried out, her face was red with rage. While Hermione had been devastated by the news of Harry's betrayal, Ginny had been apoplectic. The former Gryffindor had acted out in the months following Harry's arrest, causing trouble and nearly getting herself suspended from Hogwarts. She had been thrown off the Quidditch team after such a violent display against the Slytherin team that even the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, who traditionally supported Gryffindor, had been shocked and appalled at the display, chanting for her ejection from game play. Much to her brothers' shock and dismay (Ron's especially) she had worked her way solidly through quite a few er…'boyfriends', developing quite a reputation for herself. It had been the chaotic, destructive path of a girl in pain and turmoil and Hermione was sad to admit that she had not been as supportive as she might have been. She had disapproved of Ginny's actions and been quick to tell her so. Hermione had given the younger girl her judgement instead of her sympathy. Later her judgement would turn to hypocrisy as Hermione's own choices became destructive and jaded. All of them had been affected by Harry's choices whether he knew it or not.

Hermione felt as though they had been over this argument before but she still felt compelled to justify her own actions. "Harry…we couldn't lie under oath. Everything that we said was the truth. And you _know_ that," Hermione said, her eyes were filling with tears but her voice was stern. The pain and betrayal in Harry's voice were visceral but to blame them for his sentence wasn't right and he needed to see that.

"I never asked any of you to lie and I never blamed you for telling the truth as you knew it. Although I might have wished that you all didn't _volunteer_ private information to the Ministry that they had no business knowing about," he added with a significant glance at Ron. His shoulders were stiff, and for a moment Hermione had a flash of memory at seeing his bare back in the courtroom, horribly mutilated. Evidence that they had never truly known what kind of life their best friend had led.

Ron shifted guiltily for a moment before suddenly sitting up straighter. When he spoke, his voice was almost gentle though his speech was direct and he met Harry's eyes easily. "If there's anything I regret Harry, it's that I didn't come forward with what I knew a lot sooner. I was a kid and I thought that I was keeping a friend's secret but…what the Dursleys did to you for all those years was wrong. And… and things like that shouldn't be kept secret. I knew that you were being mistreated in that house, I just never knew it was that bad. But that's not an excuse. I should have said something and let the adults figure it out. You needed help and I didn't make sure that you got it. And for _that_ I really am sorry but not for anything that came afterwards."

Harry gave Ron a long, considering look, gauging his honesty. Hermione wasn't quite sure what he saw in Ron's brown eyes but after a long moment he gave his former friend a nod in acknowledgement, though by his expression it was impossible to tell if he felt that Ron was in the right or he was simply acknowledging that he could no longer trust any of them with hissecrets.

"Alright," he said after a moment, "but that doesn't explain why not a single one of you would even listen to my side of the story. We were supposed to be friends! Friends that were supposed to do anything for each other and honestly I always felt that you two," he said pointing at Ron and Hermione, "did. You risked your lives for me over and over and I haven't forgotten that, but you seem to have forgotten everything I've ever done the moment you hear something about me you don't like?"

"Didn't like? You say it like they were disagreeing with you about a career choice or something." Alex suddenly questioned, his tone strangely aggressive considering she did not think he had ever met Harry before. And in fact, Harry blinked at him before his eyes flicked to Charlie as though putting the pieces together as to had confronted him at all.

Harry answered coolly, "It always seemed that finding out the Dursleys were abusive and my supposed secrecy about it was almost a worst crime than what happened to them afterwards."

Hermione felt as though she had been punched in the gut and from his expression it seemed that Ron felt the same way. But she couldn't help but notice how carefully worded Harry's reply had been, still no admission of guilt.

"It was never a crime to be abused Harry, it was a crime for you to turn to Voldemort for help when you could have turned to us!" Hermione finally shouted out, horrified that he would think such a thing and feeling a strange guilt for ever giving him cause to feel that way. _What was supposed to have done? Was she wrong to have stayed away?_

Neville gave a frustrated groan and shook his head, "what would you have done Harry? If it was one of us, would have just let it go because we were _friends_? Stayed friends with a Death Eater while you worked in the Order? Ignore the fact that we're on two opposite sides of the war and then come by every now and then to talk about the good old days when we know that those days don't matter anymore? " She could not recall Neville ever sounding so harsh but she was impressed with his question.

"I would have asked!" Harry yelled, suddenly passionate.

"There was nothing to explain. There is no excuse for what you did Harry," Remus answered, voice tight. There was sternness in his voice but more than anything he looked rather tired. The older man was looking at Harry with less vitriol than in past days and Hermione knew that the werewolf had been badly shaken by Teddy's fall the day before. The fact that he essentially owed his son's life to Harry was not an easy thing for the man to take.

"How would you know? Not one of you ever asked me what happened that day at Privet Drive. You all took the Ministry's word that they had it all figured out and that was good enough for you."

"Harry, you have to understand…"

"I understand plenty Hermione," Harry snapped, his voice suddenly losing all patience. "I know how the Ministry operates. They got each of you in a small little room and asked you a bunch of questions that you couldn't say no to. 'Was I upset that year? Moody? Did I hate staying with the Dursleys? Did I have a good reason to? You knew that my relatives were mistreating me but you didn't say anything, isn't that right? Did I have a temper? Have you ever seen me do anything violent? Oh you have? Then couldn't I have done something even worse than that if I were angry enough? It's possible, isn't it?'"

Hermione glanced uneasily at the others in the room. That was a remarkably accurate description of what had happened. She had walked into that room certain that they had made a terrible mistake. Certain that Harry was being set up or being accused unfairly but…the case that they had presented her had made _so much_ sense. If there was one thing that Hermione was sure about in her life it was that facts could not be argued.

Harry let out a long breath and spoke more quietly, "I know what the Ministry does and I never expected any of you to lie for me, but if you're asking what I would have done- I would have _**asked**_ you what happened. After five years of friendship and _everything_ that we had been through together, I would have come to talk to you _one_ time in four years and given you a tiny benefit of the doubt. You want to talk about fairness Hermione, what about that?"

Hermione swallowed roughly, he was right. She and the others had cut Harry out of their lives the second the verdict had been delivered and had rarely, if ever, looked back. She had missed her friend, mourned the loss of him as she would have a death, but she had never questioned her decision to end their friendship.

"We- _they-_ didn't want to hear any more of your lies," Bill suddenly answered. Bill had been quiet on the subject of Harry's return. He had never known Harry as well as the rest of them and had not been as hurt when he had discovered that Harry had turned traitor, but he been witness to the pain it had caused his family and his wife and that had been enough to turn him against any sympathy for Harry he might have felt. He was looking at Harry with a stone face now as he continued. "The Ministry explained quite a lot actually Harry. Like the fact that you had been using the scar on your head- the scar that you only have after your mother _sacrificed her life_ for you- and claiming that you were seeing visions from Voldemort."

Harry frowned in thought but his face did not waver, "I told you all this myself. In case you've all forgotten, my scar is the reason that I was able to get your father help after he was bitten by Nagini."

Bill ground his teeth together and Ginny glared at Harry. Mrs. Weasley had tears in her eyes but the other Weasleys appeared divided. It was Charlie, a silent but frowning Alex standing beside him, that spoke up next, "The Healers at St. Mungos were certain Harry- it's _impossible_ to have the kind of visions that you were describing. There has been no documented history of a curse scar ever acting in that way before, so the only explanation is that you were siding with You-Know-Who all along and used this stunt to get us to trust you. _Depend_ on you." Charlie had a way of spelling out events as facts rather than accusations. He had no anger in his voice but there was a kind of gross disappointment that Hermione felt an even stronger note.

Harry was quiet for a moment. "And you all believe this?"

He glanced around the room, no one spoke but several uneasy glances were exchanged and slowly the heads started to nod. Ron glanced at Hermione and raised his brow, as though asking her about her opinion. Hermione though for once didn't know what to think, it was the thing she had struggled the hardest to accept, both of them had. She and Ron had heard more about Harry's scar than the others. Not just the visions but the small shooting pains that he would feel. The tingle of danger that he had felt as far back as their First Year when Voldemort had been too close for comfort. The dream that he had before their Fourth Year had begun when Voldemort had not even returned yet. The hysterical but painful laughter he had experienced the night before the breakout of Azkaban. It was the one thing that she was not certain that the Ministry was right about, and she could see that Ron felt the same way. But in the past it had always seemed like a small detail, or perhaps even further reason why Harry would turn. He had a connection to Voldemort that was seemingly impossible and yet extraordinarily intimate. It made sense that if it did exist, the evil but powerful wizard would have affected the way Harry thought about things, affected the choices he made and the actions he took.

Harry nodded slowly, his voice was surprisingly calm, "Well…I really am a mastermind, aren't I? I never realized you all gave me so much credit. And the Occulumency lessons? What about those?"

"Dumbledore gave you the benefit of the doubt and wanted you to learn Occlumency, but Snape told us that he taught you for months and you never seemed to improve at all. Why is that Harry? After all, you were able to throw off the Imperious Curse in only your Fourth Year- why was it that you couldn't do this? Unless you could and just wanted us to think that you were struggling with advanced magic," Bill spoke but honestly anyone in the room could have said the same thing, it had been a topic that had been discussed when they had struggled to understand how Harry had switched sides.

Harry said nothing for a moment before he nodded, his expression hardening into something business-like. It was strange to see the anger fade so completely and yet somehow the calm indifference he was projecting now seemed so much worse than his anger. Anger meant that he still cared for them but this cold new attitude made it seem as though no one in the room mattered to him at all. "Well, that finally answers my question. I've been wondering for a long time why none of you of ever asked me about anything. It looks like you all got together and have it figured out perfectly."

The argument might have continued until the scene turned ugly, so Hermione was glad when it was interrupted by the arrival of Professors Dumbledore, Snape and finally McGonagall. In spite of the tension still in the room, Hermione took note of the stiff postures and grim expressions that the three professors wore. Snape in particular was scowling so deeply that it made it seem as though his normal dour disposition downright cheerful. Something had happened, she was sure.

"Potter," Professor McGonagall greeted stiffly. She had not been present the last couple of days as she had been handling business at the school, she looked at her former student with a hard-to-read expression on her stern face.

"Professor," Harry returned with no emotion on his face at all. If he was angry or upset it was impossible to say but Hermione suspected that simply because it was not visible did not mean that it wasn't there, or at least that was her hope.

"Thank you all for coming. Again," Dumbledore began. "I know that we have taken a lot of your time recently and I appreciate those of you that have had to balance your busy personal and professional lives with your commitment to the Order."

There was a murmur of acknowledgement, not all of it entirely good natured. She and Ron as well as quite a few others had spent most of the night trying to make up for work that they had missed over the past couple of days and her exhaustion felt as though it was physically weighing her down. Her eyes itched and her muscles were aching in protest. She didn't think she could stay up another night after this.

"To get straight to the point, as time is shorter than I would have liked, Harry, I think that you are aware that we did not get you released from Azkaban simply to help us translate for a runespoor and I would assume at this point that you might be more than curious as to the real reason behind this untraditional furlough?"

Harry inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement and his voice was level as he answered, as though concerned that if he seemed too eager to know anything then they would decide not to tell him. "You're right, I didn't think my language skills were that extraordinary. Although I have to admit that I thought that you might try and get me to help you sooner or later…all things considered," he said giving the Headmaster a penetrating stare and clearly communicating much more than his words implied.

There was an ominous weight to these words that Hermione didn't quite understand, nor was she the only one in the dark. There were several glances of confusion around the room- with the sole exception of Severus Snape, whose eyes had narrowed, his usually unreadable mask uncovered for once with frank understanding.

Dumbledore nodded gravely, "Indeed. And this is in fact….related to that very issue. We need your help, Harry, because we have found that you are the only one that will be able to complete a task that will lead to the destruction of Lord Voldemort."

Harry nodded as though this was unexpected and given what the Order was tasked with doing, perhaps this much had been obvious and therefore his next question was not about the possible logistics of such a task but a query as to his own involvement.

"Why now? You've all presumably been trying to kill Voldemort for years, so why did you suddenly decide that you need my help? Better yet, after all this time, why should I help you?"

There were a few angry protests as to Harry's willingness to do the 'right' thing but Dumbledore's answer was calm. "I cannot speak to what you feel you should or should not do Harry, that is a choice that each of us must make for ourselves. However, if you are willing to at least hear what we are asking of you, I can at least answer your first question."

Harry looked slightly taken aback that Dumbledore had not delivered a lecture as to why helping the Order would be the right thing but it was perhaps this very surprise that led him to nod his acceptance that he was at least willing to hear them out.

Dumbledore smiled briefly but it was short lived and when he spoke again his tone was serious. "We believe that we have located a locket that once belonged to Tom Riddle's mother, Merope. The locket was the only thing of value that she owned, as it used to belong to Salazar Slytherin. She wound up selling it when she was quite desperate, and for much less than it was worth. In his early twenties, Tom Riddle discovered not only the locket but its unfortunate history and stole it back."

Harry frowned, "And what? You think if you can find a locket that belonged to his dead mum he'll suddenly...feel like he's disappointed her by becoming a mass murderer and change his ways?"

Snape, to Hermione's great surprise, gave a brief snort of amusement, but he seemed to be the only one that found the comment amusing, even the twins were quiet.

Dumbledore instead looked rather sad as he said, "If things could only have been so easy. But no, for reasons I will explain in a moment, Voldemort's very life is dependent upon the continued existence of this locket and after many years of searching, we have finally found it."

"Where?"

"In a cave," Arthur interjected. "Riddle's orphanage once took a trip there, according to Albus, and it was one of the first places that Voldemort learned that he could not only use and control magic but could use it to terrify people."

"Warm, happy memories associated with the place then," Harry muttered causing Fred and George to laugh appreciatively.

"We tried to get to the locket ourselves but the magical protection is too great, which is where _you_ come in," Mad-Eye admitted gruffly, clearly unhappy with the situation.

"So you came to Azkaban to get someone that never even got a chance to take NEWT classes and hasn't used magic in about four years?" Harry asked skeptically, crossing his thin arms over his chest.

"Voldemort used your blood when he resurrected himself, which he also used as a barrier to the cave. You can enter because _he_ can enter," Dumbledore explained. "And you also share a wand core which is also needed to gain entrance into the cave but we've recently discovered the rather interesting fact that no one appears to be able to use your wand with the exception of yourself."

"You're going to give me back my wand?" Harry asked sharply, his expression somewhere between longing and excitement.

"Temporarily," Mad-Eye said quickly.

"But you're really going to give me back my wand just to get into this cave?" he asked his expression blank with shock, his hands unconsciously flexing into fists beneath the cuffs blocking his magic. But moments later his expression hardened. "What is it you _really_ want from me?"

Hermione couldn't quite explain why she felt so much guilt at hearing that Harry was so certain that none of them would be willing to give him anything if they weren't given something in return, but she did. There was a trust between them that was shattered and while she wanted to blame it all on Harry, after hearing what he had said that morning, she couldn't deny that they could have done more. They could have spoken with him, visited him. Muggle prisoners had visitors all the time, and she had known from the story of Barty Crouch Jr.'s escape that his parents had visited him. Why had she felt that even if Harry was guilty that it erased five years of friendship?

Dumbledore was calmly contemplating Harry over his half-moon spectacles before he asked a question that surprised them all. "Harry, what can you tell me about Horcruxes?" She, and from the surprised gasp of several others, had not expected Dumbledore to reveal the real reason they needed Harry's help and she wondered why it was that Dumbledore had suddenly thrown caution to the wind and told him their greatest secret.

Hermione felt an odd jolt of déjà vu. Dumbledore had shown them all a memory of a young Tom Riddle asking an old professor the same question many years ago. It had been Neville that had quietly pointed out the similarities between Riddle and Harry. Both of them were orphans. Both were intelligent. They even looked similar with their black hair and pale skin. But Riddle had carried himself with a confidence that leaned towards arrogance. Harry had always seemed more self-conscious, yet more approachable and easy going. Still both of them possessed that indefinable air of leadership about them. An ability to get people to follow them.

"Horcruxes?" Harry asked blankly, shooting an oddly guilty glance at Professor McGonagall as though he had just been caught without his homework.

"It's not something that you would have learned about in school Mr. Potter," McGonagall answered stiffly though her mouth twitched as though she might smile.

Harry shook his head, "I've never heard about them."

Dumbledore nodded, "I didn't think that you would have. They aren't well-known, even in our world, because not only are they extremely dangerous but they also require the darkest of magic to make one. A Horcrux is the reason that Voldemort was able to survive the night the Killing Curse rebounded on him."

Harry was listening intently, his face was still and concentrated, his eyes focused on the Headmaster as he spoke.

"As a student, Tom Riddle was able to get access to a book that I have since banned from Hogwarts. This book reveals the process of how to protect ones' self from death."

Harry's eyes widened slightly but he didn't speak.

"If a wizard splits his soul and places the torn piece into an object it is protected and as long as part of the soul is still alive, a person cannot truly die."

Harry stared at them all, clearly horrified and Hermione couldn't help but feel slightly relieved that his reaction was not one of fascination or greed.

"He couldn't possibly be that stupid…" Harry breathed.

"Voldemort has always feared death, to him there is no greater fate to suffer."

"Well to be fair, there's not much worse than dying," Fred joked rather weakly.

"There are a lot things that are worse than dying," Harry and Dumbledore answered at the same time.

Remus looked up in surprise. "That's…that's a wise thing to notice, Harry," he said stiffly.

Harry raised his brow at him, clearly surprised that the man was addressing him civilly at all. Hermione got the distinct impression that Remus was having a hard time knowing what to think about Harry. He was so different from any other Death Eater they had ever questioned. It wasn't, after all, the first time that they had a captured or obtained information from one of Voldemort's followers. Ron in particular had gotten surprisingly good at flipping a few key people for information. But none of them even pretended to renounce the 'Dark Lord' as Harry did at every turn. Add to that the fact that Harry had been Remus' last connection to the Marauders and had just saved his son's life, and Remus didn't know how to feel about him.

"But how is he able to do something like that? Splitting his soul? I didn't think that was even possible."

"To do something so…monstrous one has to commit a monstrous act. An act of supreme and irredeemable evil."

"Murder," Harry finished quietly, his expression thoughtful.

Dumbledore nodded, "Taking the life of another taints a person's very soul. But to create a Horcrux one must go even deeper. They must sacrifice their own humanity in exchange for the promise of their survival."

McGonagall nodded, his face stern as he spoke to Harry, "Yes, there are some acts that are so final that they tear at our very soul. There is no coming back from some of the decisions that we make."

Harry's head tilted slightly his expression still thoughtful, "I don't know about that."

"What do you mean, Harry?" Hermione asked frowning.

Harry sighed, when he spoke his voice was still tired and although less hoarse than it had been two days ago it was still sore and rough sounding making him sound much older than his 19 years. "I've met a lot of people that have done some terrible things Hermione, but not all of them handle it the same way. Some of the brag about it. Some of them are so caught up in what they think the world owes them that any punishment seems worth what they got to do to earn it. But some of them truly regret what they've done, they feel the pain of it every day of their lives and would never do it again. I think regret like that has to mean something. I don't think that we can judge a person by the worst thing they've ever done- they're a collection of all the things they've done."

This statement was met with a moment of thoughtful silence. Broken by Draco, "That's a nice thought Potter, but there are some things that can't be undone. Doesn't matter if you feel really bad that you killed someone, they're still dead."

Harry gave Draco a long and considering look, in the old days he would have had a comment. He would have argued back but now he seemed to have learned to let the weight of his own argument stand by him. "Actually, Harry has once again proven himself to be very insightful," Dumbledore said mildly. "Remorse is both a powerful and painful thing to experience. And it is, in fact, the only way to repair a damaged soul once it has been broken. It is not an easy thing to embrace but those that have the courage to look at what they have done and accept responsibility are rare indeed. Those that find forgiveness within themselves and strive to live a better life… rarer still."

Dumbledore was looking at Harry thoughtfully, evidently trying to see if Harry was the type of person that he was describing.

Harry on the other hand seemed oblivious to this scrutiny, he was focused on the matter at hand. "So Voldemort made a Horcrux and that's the reason that he didn't die after he killed my mother?"

Dumbledore shook his head sadly, "Unfortunately not quite, if that was the whole story, that would have made things a bit more straightforward. But Lord Voldemort has never deemed himself an ordinary wizard and as such wanted to ensure that he had a bit more of a…secure policy."

Harry's eyes were glued to Dumbledore's in horrified fascination. "You can't mean that he actually made more than one of these things."

"He made six," Ginny said tightly.

Harry's eyes widened, his jaw dropped ever so slightly, and the small amount of color that had started to fill his cheeks in the past couple of day was gone.

"Six?" he croaked. "He really is absolutely bloody insane," Harry whispered in a shock so genuine that Hermione couldn't help but believe him.

"You can't tell us that you're actually upset," Ginny sneered, "I thought that you would be thrilled that Voldemort has a way to live forever."

"Come on Gin, Potter wanted to learn from You-Know-Who, not serve him forever. He wanted to learn the Dark Arts and then kill the old guard so that he could be the next Dark Lord. Heirs have to take the throne eventually, right?" Draco chided.

Harry turned slowly towards Malfoy, "Someday Draco it's just going to be you against all the lies that you've told in your life. I hope you were listening to what I was saying earlier- about regret. I have a lot of regrets Draco, more than you could ever realize, but at least I've always known who I am, and I've stood by that person no matter what happened to me. But for you? It's going to crash down on you like an avalanche and let's just say I'm not nearly a good enough person not to enjoy the fallout that's going to come from that."

Malfoy blinked. In spite of the words, the tone was almost tired, no spark of anger present as he said it. Harry had been considerably more argumentative that morning than he had been since his arrival but the fight in him seemed to have left him. He looked tired. When she had been at Azkaban the Auror had told them Harry's file had said he was 'depressed', and she was beginning to see the effects of it in front of her.

"Dumbledore," Harry said, returning to the conversation at hand. It was polite but cold. "Do you have any idea what Voldemort might have used?"

"A have a few educated guesses. Voldemort is a man of very particular tastes. I've known him for most of his life, I was actually the professor sent to his orphanage to tell of him about his Wizarding heritage and I've learned to know what to expect from him. The first Horcrux that he created has already been destroyed- by you in fact."

Harry's eyes widened in surprise and his face shifted into one of acute suspicion, "What are you talking about?"

"The diary. Tom Riddle's diary."

"The memory," Harry muttered thoughtfully, his eyes darting briefly in Ginny's direction, almost unconsciously.

"Yes, it was in fact a piece of Voldemort's soul. It was that piece of evidence that actually first put me on to what he was doing, Harry. You see a Horcurx is an extremely valuable and fragile thing. For Voldemort to be so…careless with his one true defense against his greatest fear-"

"There must have been more than one. Others that he was using for safekeeping and this one that he was using as a weapon. Have you found any others?"

"A ring. One that once belonged to Marvolo Gaunt, Tom Riddle's maternal grandfather."

"Marvolo?" Harry questioned.

"The very same, Harry. Tom stole the ring from his uncle, who had inherited the ring from his father after his death. He then murdered his father and his paternal grandparents and set up his uncle for the crime. The ring was a family heirloom, one of the only things that the Gaunts, who also happened to be the last descendants of Salazar Slytherin, owned that had any value."

If any piece of this story shocked Harry, he hid it very well in Hermione's opinion. He seemed wholly uninterested in the fact that Tom Riddle had murdered half of his family and framed the rest of them. Instead he seemed focused on the growing list of objects.

"So six Horcruxes plus whatever part of his rotten soul is left in his body- so that's seven… because Voldemort thinks he can tap into the powerful of the most magical number," he muttered to himself. "The diary, a ring, what else?"

"The others are objects that have either personal or magical significance. Some we are rather sure about, but most is speculation at best," Dumbledore explained. "Tom Riddle was a very lonely and unfortunate boy that looked in all the wrong places for a feeling of self-worth. He was a brilliant student, one of the best I ever taught, if I must be completely honest. He had an uncanny grasp of control even before he entered Hogwarts, but his single greatest problem was that he had an abhorrence for any feeling of mediocrity. He strived to stand out."

Harry nodded slowly, his expression thoughtful. He was speaking purely to Dumbledore at this point and Hermione briefly wondered if he even remembered that anyone else was in the room at the moment. "When I spoke to the Tom Riddle that came out of the diary…he told me that he had changed his name to Lord Voldemort because his father was nothing but a common muggle."

Dumbledore nodded, "I was the one that gave Tom his Hogwarts letter so many years ago, and it was I that first explained the magical world to him. This is a task that I've done many, many times over the years and all muggleborns have a unique and wondrous reaction to the discovery of our world. Some are stunned, others very much relieved to learn that the feats they have done have an explanation, but I recall Riddle's as a confirmation of his own greatness. 'Special' is the word he had used to describe himself. He was special and he had always known it. I also learned at this time that even as child Tom liked to collect 'trophies' of a sort after he had inflicted pain on others. In spite of his brilliance and despite his knowledge that he was 'special', Tom was an immensely jealous person."

This announcement, more involved than Dumbledore had told the rest of the Order, was met with a few looks of surprise. It was easy to fear Voldemort and very easy to hate him, but understanding him as a child was not something most of them had never tried to do before. Perhaps unsurprisingly one of the few people that did not seem taken aback by this characterization was Harry himself.

Harry nodded, "He wanted to take what someone else had because he didn't have much himself. As an orphan he had to look at other people and picture what a normal life was like."

Dumbledore let these words sit with everyone and Hermione noticed a few people shift uncomfortably in their chairs for a minute before he went back to the task at hand. "The other objects we believe are mostly items related to Founders of Hogwarts, a Cup owned by Helga Hufflepuff, something owned by either Ravenclaw or Gryffindor, although I lean more towards Ravenclaw since I do know for a fact that both Godric's hat and sword were not made into Horcruxes. Slytherin's item I will get to in a second but first I wanted to bring your attention to what I believe to be the Sixth horcrux, his snake Nagini."

"Nagini?" Harry asked in surprise, "How is that possible? Doesn't a snake already have a soul?"

"Animals don't have souls," Bill corrected with impatience.

"Yes they do, studies in the Department of Mysteries have shown that they do," Charlie argued.

Dumbledore inclined his head in the direction of the second Weasley son. "Charlie is correct, animals do possess souls, just not ones as complex as our own. It is interesting that you bring that up, Harry. Every other person that has heard about Nagini has questioned the wisdom of putting a Horcrux into a living creature, something very ill-advised and dangerous indeed, but no one but yourself has questioned the fact that the existence of one soul does preclude the existence of second soul in the same vessel. I dare say you might recall Voldemort's ability to control Nagini during Arthur Weasley's attack? He had implicit trust in Nagini, something that he shows to no one. One might question how he could be so sure that his express wishes would be carried out when he has shown no such confidence in even his human followers."

Harry brow had furrowed in thought but with these revelations he had turned stark white, his pupils wide and dilated. His breath had become shallow and it seemed as though he had gone into a type of shock at hearing this that nothing else he had learned thus far had been able to induce.

Dumbledore looked strangely sympathetic. "We need your help Harry," Dumbledore stated plainly, his voice quiet but sincere. "Regardless of anything that has happened in the past, we are asking you to help us."

Hermione knew that she wasn't the only one that was surprised when Harry hesitated. They had been positive that the fact that he would, even temporarily, be given his wand back would guarantee his cooperation. Instead he struggled to pull himself together and looked coolly at Dumbledore. "Before I agree to anything, I want to talk to you. Alone. I think you owe me that much."

"Why do you think anyone owes you anything?" Bill asked sharply but Harry seemed to only have eyes for Dumbledore in that moment. He had been distracted for the last several minutes, agitated by something that he had learned but it was clear that he was not prepared to discuss it in front of everyone in the room.

"I agree Harry, in fact…I have owed you this conversation for a very, very long time. If you would all excuse us."

There was surprise and a few weak protests, but in the end they all bowed to Dumbledore's request for privacy, but then there had never been any real question that they would always bow to Dumbledore's judgement, was there? They filed out and closed the door, the last thing Hermione saw was Harry's white face harden into lines of inexplicable anger.

HPHPHP

Harry was counting to ten.

He needed to count to ten because if he didn't, then he was going to start yelling and he would lose any kind of control that he might have hoped to have over the conversation. It had been a struggle the past couple of days. Emotions warring within him in ways that he could not remember ever experiencing before.

When he had been at Hogwarts as a fifteen year old, he had spent the year angry and confrontational. There had been _so many_ injustices that he had felt as though he was going to explode from them all. He had been dealing with the after-effects of the TriWizard Tournament, which he was no longer ashamed to say had been traumatizing to a fourteen year old; everyone had expected him to simply pick up and carry on as though witnessing the murder of a classmate was a perfectly normal part of coming of age. There had been the cover-up that had been created to make it seem as though Voldemort had not returned at all. The Ministry and the _Prophet_ had painted him as a lunatic and a liar to their entire world. Umbridge's tyrannical reign over the school. The Order's secrets and insistence that a madman bent on killing him didn't concern him at all. He had yelled and he had fought and he had pushed back against his friends because at the time they had seemed like the only safe place for his anger to go.

 _And then things had gotten bad in his life_ , he often laughed cynically to himself when he remembered how angry he had been over things that seemed almost insignificant now. Almost. After all they had provided plenty of memories for the Dementors. But when had first been imprisoned there had been anger. He had cursed the Ministry, cursed the Order, cursed Dumbledore and most of all he had cursed his friends. The only friends that he had ever had and the people that he would have died for, would have killed for- which, honestly, at times had seemed a harder task to him. And they had not even stopped to consider that he was innocent. Or to be more accurate, if they failed to see how he could be innocent with the facts that they had, then they had also not stopped to ever questions his reasons. Because they had owed him that much.

But after four years of exposure to dementors, of constant soul breaking torture and questioning and suspicion,after Maggie dying in his arms and learning that he had a lost a child that he had never even known about or realized would be his one and only chance at having a child...anger was too hard to maintain.

It was _tiring_ and it had simply started to be too hard to feel something as strong and even as healthy as anger. Harry only felt numb. He wanted to sleep. Though he had scarcely admitted it to himself, a large part of him had wanted to die. But being back in this house, away from the dementors and pain and listening to the hypocrisy of the Order- of people he had once considered his _friends-_ again and again, it had revitalized him in a way he had not felt in a long time. It had started slowly and truth be told, it had not even started with himself. Hearing that Lupin had abandoned Teddy had sparked anger in him in a way he had been unable to feel purely for his own sake, because Lupin was doing to his own son what he had done to Harry.

Making excuses for not seeing him, using his lycanthropy as a crutch to get out of any responsibility. Harry had never even met the supposed best friend of his father until he had been 13 and even then the man had only revealed the connection by accident. After that year, he had never reached out to Harry. Not a single letter during the TriWizard Tournament to offer support, not a single check in during the summer after the graveyard to see if he was managing alright, not even when Sirius had died.

But in a lot of ways, Harry had understood and even excused his behavior. He had reminded himself that Lupin honestly owed him nothing. He was not family, he was not his godfather. He was, very simply, a man who had been friends with his father as a schoolboy. There was no obligation to care for your friends' orphaned children after they passed. But now Lupin was applying the same attitude to his own son and the fact that he would leave his own flesh and blood to the kind of loneliness and isolation he had known as a child had infuriated him. The fact that Lupin would show anything other than extreme gratitude and protectiveness over the blessing of _having_ a family was unforgivable to him, not when he had been denied that privilege once with the murder of his parents and then again with Maggie's death.

But that rage had helped wake Harry from the stupor of depression that he had been feeling. First had come anger but then had come...affection. Affection for the two small, innocent boys that didn't look at him as though he was a monster. Tenderness for the small boys that had brought an unexpected feeling of innocent contentment back to him. And so Harry had woken up this morning with a new perspective and new energy, but he still remembered that he had come here for a purpose. The Order was a means to an end. Harry could be angry and blame them all he wanted for believing the worst of him and failing to come and see him, but that didn't change the fact that it was _Voldemort_ that was responsible for putting him there in the first place. Voldemort had taken everything from Harry. His parents, his childhood, his godfather, his freedom and, in the end, his friends. And if Harry had to play nice with the Order to get his real revenge- then so be it.

Except what he had just learned changed everything. Because as it turned out, after all this time he had been wrong to consider Voldemort his only true enemy after all.

The others had left the room almost a full two minutes earlier but neither one of them seemed to be inclined to speak first. Dumbledore surveyed Harry quietly as the younger man tried to control his raging temper. After another moment he observed, "You figured it out remarkably quickly. I confess I had not expected you to make the connection so readily."

Harry snorted in disbelief and gave a disbelieving shake of his head, "If you had told me back at Hogwarts I probably wouldn't have. Back then I actually believed that things would...that ' _good would win in the end_ ' or something ridiculous like that. ' _Only one can live while the other survives'_ , I wasn't confident that I could beat Voldemort but I sure as hell didn't think that we would be linked so closely that I would need to die for him be able to. I think back then I wouldn't have made the connection at all. But I think I've gotten used to idea of the universe playing one long perverse joke on me at this point. It's true then? I'm a Horcrux."

Dumbledore gave him a slow, solemn nod and Harry honestly didn't know if he should laugh, cry or merely scream to the heavens at the injustice of it all. "And why would you tell me this? Why not just kill me years ago? Because if what you say is true, eventually _someone_ has to kill me. I've never cared much for the whole hero role but I have to say I like the sound of bravely sacrificing my life for the people I cared about a lot more than discrediting me to every friend I ever had, torturing me in Azkaban for years, only to end up killing me anyway. Personally I find the latter to be a bit overkill, all things considered," he was trying to come off as biting, but his voice was shaking a bit too much with anger for him pull off the sarcastic edge he had been striving towards.

"Would you have willingly given such a sacrifice? Had you known the truth?" The Headmaster's voice was disturbingly calm, as though they were merely discussing an interesting hypothetical than Harry's life.

Harry gave a bitter smile, "I think we both know that I would have. I loved them. Ron, Hermione, Sirius- I would have gladly died if I had known that they were safe but Sirius is dead because of one of your secrets and Ron and Hermione hate me now because of one of your others, though I wouldn't presume to assume your last one," he added bitterly.

Dumbledore gave another slow nod and Harry was surprised to find that he was actively restraining himself from attacking the old man, he had thought that he had finally killed off such instincts after so many 'training' sessions with the guards. But Dumbledore still had that unbreakable calm that surrounded him in the face of any tragedy that struck or any misdeed unveiled and it only fueled Harry's anger at him.

"I never wanted you to go to Azkaban Harry. I never thought it fair that you should suffer for actions that were not in your own control but I think that you can see now that the presence and control that Voldemort has over the piece of soul in your scar was too dangerous to go unchecked and yet..." and here Dumbledore did look truly remorseful, "and yet, you are still the chosen one of prophesy. The fact that you are the only one that could go into the cave proves this. There are other obstacles that I am almost assured that only you could conquer as well. I know this will mean very little to you Harry, but what I did, staying silent in regards as to why you attacked your relatives and Mrs. Figg so viciously, why you were compelled to take the enslaving mark of a man that I do know you consciously despise, I did because I had to balance the safety of the world against the comfort and justice of one man. I understand that it was unfair to you, and I do not expect your forgiveness or even your understanding but you should know that it was no easy decision on my part."

"Staying silent..." Harry's mind caught up to the fact that Dumbledore seemed to have reached a conclusion about the events at Privet Drive that no one else had thought of. Dumbledore believed Harry to be Voldemort's puppet. A dangerous, murderous little puppet that needed to be controlled.

Harry shook his head ruefully, "You know, all I wanted during my Fifth Year was to join the Order. From the first night that I heard about it, I wanted to fight with people that would stand up to Voldemort no matter how hard it got. Only I was told that I was 'too young', 'I wouldn't understand,' and my own personal favorite, because it made no sense at all, 'it didn't concern me'. I hated the idea that no one was telling me what was going on, was refusing to trust me after _I_ was the one that fought Voldemort in the graveyard. But you know what I've found out in the last couple of days?

"That none of you know a goddamn thing. Your Order believes whatever is the most convenient for them at the time or worse, whatever you tell them. And you- you're the worst one of all because you tell them lies to suit whatever you want and then come up with your own conclusions without even considering that you don't have all the facts."

Dumbledore was giving him a look of honest confusion and, absurdly, Harry thought it was the most human he had ever seen the man look, because as much as he wanted to blame the others, he too had bought into the lie. The idea that Albus Dumbledore saw and knew all, and what he said was undoubtedly true because he knew best.

"I told you before, I didn't attack the Dursleys and I sure as hell never killed Mrs. Figg. A few Death Eaters paid my uncle off to beat me and then dump me. Once I was gone from the house, Voldemort used Polyjuice and my own wand to frame me."

Dumbledore looked at him stunned. "But you were arrested at the scene."

Harry shook his head impatiently, "Voldemort was arrested and that idiot Dawlish that gets himself Confunded or Imperised every other day was tricked into making the switch and forgetting about it. Honestly, how he is still an Auror would be mind boggling to me, but then I have seen a lot worse, I suppose," he muttered.

"You were framed," Dumbledore said softly, slowly, as though the idea had honestly never occurred to him. "The Horcrux..."

"Burns like a bitch and still gives me plenty of visions of Voldemort being his evil, twisted self but has never possessed me aside from that time in the Ministry of Magic that you witnessed. _When I pushed him out_ ," Harry added significantly.

Harry was pleased to see that the Headmaster looked as though someone had slapped him. The man looked at Harry as though he thought that he might discover a lie but after a moment he seemed to accept that Harry had spoken the unmitigated truth. It was clear that he had convinced himself of his little pet theory and not allowed himself to consider the idea that he could have been wrong, and even though Harry felt the rage of injustice at the man's presumption, there was also a kind of morbid satisfaction that he could see that the mistake had cost the old man dearly. There was nothing short of agony in his expression.

"You never even spoke to me, after everything I did for you, you couldn't be bothered to even check to see if you were right. But _now_ you need my help. Now, after everyone I ever cared about has turned on me and I spent the last four years as a punching bag for a Ministry that I have grown to hate almost as much as I hate Voldemort, and a Minister that I _do_ hate as much- _now_ you want my help. So I guess I have to ask you again, _why should I do anything to help you_?"

It was a shocking, horrifying type of magic to see the way Dumbledore seemed to age in front of him. The man's shoulder's hunched, his face grew weary and lined, and his hands trembled slightly from shock. "There is no reason you should help me, Harry," he said simply. "I have done you a great disservice and because of that you have suffered, suffered far more than any man should be made to suffer and all because I was certain of something that I had no reason to assume could be the only solution."

Harry stayed silent but he agreed with everything the man said. He waited for Dumbledore to go on to the reasons why it was still important that he forgive them, but he was surprised when the Headmaster made no move to continue. "You honestly only kept me alive thinking I might be of use to you someday?" He asked after a moment, pain and betrayal creeping into his voice.

Dumbledore shook his head slowly, "Given my first choice I would have kept you in St. Mungo's or another equally secure location where the condition of the Horcrux could be monitored and controlled if necessary but...you must understand that there is nothing more vital to the war effort than ensuring that Voldemort never finds out about our knowledge of his Horcruxes, especially that he created another by accident," he added with a significant look at Harry. "But I also knew that the person that you truly are...you would want to fight against him. That once fully in control of your body and mind you would not hesitate to do what is needed."

"You honestly expect me to what... _sacrifice my life_ for all you? After all of this? Have you really lost your mind?" Harry asked in indignation.

Dumbledore gave him a long, sad look, perhaps seeing another life, one in which Harry would have walked willingly to his death if it meant that he could have protected those that he loved. He could picture it himself, the way he had once been. The trust and the care that he had had for Ron and Hermione and even the rest of the Weasleys, but that part of him had been killed off a long time ago between the Dementors and the Aurors. There had once been a time when he would have thought that he owed them the sacrifice but now he was the one that was owed his life.

Dumbledore paused but after a moment he spoke softly, "You asked in the beginning why I told you all of this, and I haven't answered your question. As I'm sure you have realized, I could have given you another reason why it was essential that we get the Horcrux in the cave, or I quite simply could have neglected to tell you anything at all and merely said that we needed you to retrieve the locket as terms of your furlough. Rude perhaps, but certainly effective I daresay.

"But I witnessed your true self shine through yesterday in those moments when you rescued young Teddy Lupin and then guarded him from perceived threats, even if that protection was unnecessary. More importantly I saw the true joy you had when you played with him. I admit that I was mistaken in thinking that the Horcrux was controlling you, but even then I knew that the person you truly are is a good and pure man. A man who does the right thing. Someone with that strength and character deserves the unmitigated truth."

"There's doing the right thing and then there's giving your life for people that threw you aside the moment it became difficult. I'm not an idiot, Professor, I know how the Ministry manipulates people and I even understand that Ron and Hermione and even Ginny and Neville were kids at the time. I'm not claiming that I wouldn't have answered the same way if the questions had been directed at me. I know they didn't lie, I know that none of them were happy to see me convicted. I'm not angry about that, upset and hurt and disappointed of course, but not angry. But it's been years. Years! And they never thought about it. They never went back over things and realized that the person that they knew would never have done those things. They never asked for my side of the story. They never once gave me the chance to even explain!" He was panting and a part of him had not realized for a long time how much their silence and distance had hurt him. Harry had learned a long time ago that the human brain could really only comprehend so much pain and he had been rather occupied for a while.

"I cannot speak to what you should feel towards your friends Harry, but I would only caution that in my experience, it is not other people's mistakes that are hardest to face, but our own. I admit that I constructed an idea of what happened that night on Privet Drive, and once my decision was made, I refused to give thought to another explanation...because doing so would mean that I had condemned you unfairly. And so instead I ensured that your punishment continued, rather than allow it to be possibly corrected. I would assume a similar pattern of thought played into the reason why your friends never visited you. It was not fear of your mistakes, but rather terror that they had committed their own.

"I told you the truth, Harry, because quite honestly I don't believe you to be a man that can stand to go against his own conscience, and as long as you are in control of that conscience, then I see no reason why you should not be in control of this decision."

Harry raised his eyebrow at him, "You would let me decide what to do?"

"In regards to your own life, yes. I admit that I have found no other solution to destroying a Horcrux without destroy the vessel, and in spite of all that I have done to you, I will not kill you Harry. Nor will I tell anyone else that you are a Horcrux; as you have no doubt heard or realized by now, the rest of the Order is under the impression that any connection your scar has with Voldemort was fabricated to build trust and then to trick them."

Harry let out a shaky breath, all of this put his perfect little plan in tatters. He was going to use the Order to get out prison for as long as he could manage. He was going to use them to destroy the man that had ruined his life. And then...well he hadn't managed a next step that would have actually kept him out of prison but even the first two had been enough for the moment. But he had just learned that he would never be able to destroy Voldemort. Not without destroying himself. He hadn't been lying before, he knew that a few years ago he would have done it without question.

But now?

There was no winning for him. He could die in the hopes that _someone_ would kill the monster that most wizards were too scared to even name but with no certainty that it would happen, no certainty that his revenge would be complete. But did the Order or his former friends or even the rest of the Wizarding World deserve that kind of sacrifice? He sure as hell didn't think so.

Or he could live to spite the very people that had been so convinced that he had been helping Voldemort all along? He supposed that it had a certain irony to it at least. But life in Azkaban was hardly satisfying and other than spite, what did he really get from that either?

Harry was cut off from his musing after a moment when Dumbledore spoke again, "But that is not a decision that needs to be made in the moment, what to do in regards in the locket is imminently more pressing. The meeting was delayed in starting because Severus came from meeting with some of his contacts who have heard some disturbing rumors about the safety of the cave." Dumbledore glanced down at his watch, "From the information that we received, if we are ever to get a chance to retrieve it, it must be in the next hour from now. After that it will be moved."

Harry frowned, "Why within an hour? If Voldemort thought that one of his soul anchors was in danger, wouldn't he have moved on its location already?"

Dumbledore looked grave, "There are reasons for this specific timing that are too complex for me to explain in this moment, but rest assured...you will soon see that Voldemort has developed a rather nasty habit of multi-tasking."

Harry's eyes widened slightly of their own accord as they took in the implications of that and nodded, before stating the salient point. "I haven't agreed to help you with anything yet."

Dumbledore nodded, "I know, Harry, and I owe you much, but in this moment I believe that our goals align. I am not asking for a sacrifice on your part beyond your time, and in reward, if you prefer to think in such terms, you will get to use magic once more, which I know is enticing. However, the true price I can pay you is this: I will not send an innocent man back to Azkaban and so despite the oaths that I took to ensure that I return you to Ministry custody, if you help us today, I will personally promise that you never return there again."

Harry blinked, "You took oaths to return me..." If a man is willing to break one oath, he is willing to break another. Dumbledore could turn on him in an instant. The moment the locket was retrieved, what was preventing him from killing Harry then? _The other Horcruxes that he needs me to destroy. He still needs me._

"Which will have ramifications for breaking, but Azkaban is a place where people go who have committed a wrong, and of the two of us, the person that better fits the definition is myself. That being said, if I guarantee your freedom to best of my considerable ability, I also want your word that the truth of your innocence remain untold until after we return from our little adventure. Time is short, and such news will delay us too long. If you are patient now, I promise you that you will not regret it."

Harry frowned, it seemed like a trick. Keep silent and I'll help you...eventually. From any other person Harry would scoffed at such a blatant attempt at manipulation, but in spite of his many, many flaws Albus Dumbledore was no ordinary wizard and really...what could Harry do? He had been insisting on his innocence for four years and no one had believed him. Without the Headmaster to collaborate his story, he had no way to prove himself any way. And so there was really only one choice left to him for the moment. "We have a deal."

 **A/N: Sorry for the delay, but I hope the length of the chapter makes up for it. Special thanks again to mylittlehazmat for being an amazing beta and for everyone that has kept up and reviewed this story even it as it has taken quite a while for a worthwhile reveal of Harry's innocence.**


	15. Harry's Conditions

**Chapter 15: Harry's Conditions**

Ivan Tyson rifled impatiently through his desk, becoming frustrated when he broke the quill that he was looking for and wondering, not for the first time, why he kept forgetting to put his best writing quills back in the stand beside the inkwell when he was done with them. He swore lewdly under his breath and then again, louder, when he realized that he was alone and did not need to censor himself for anyone's 'delicate' sensibilities.

He had been in a foul mood all morning and was grateful for the respite from the constant stream of yes-men and sycophants that he usually so enjoyed meeting with on a daily basis. The attack on the pride parade had been more devastating to morale than it had been an effective strike against the security and integrity of the Ministry. His major departments had come out unscathed and only one Auror had suffered a fatality. But the damage to the image he had constructed for himself as the protector of Britain was a different story.

It had been a long time since the Death Eaters had succeeded in a coordinated attack and the people were suddenly nervous that all of the advances that they had made in defense, and all of the protocols that Ivan himself had been pushing for over the course of the past three and half years weren't enough. When he had taken office, the people had been terrified of the return of You-Know-Who and nearly certain that any efforts to hold off the man's rise to power would be for naught, but Ivan had since taken things well in hand. He had passed legislation to increase the power and scope of the Auror Department, he had established better communication and alert systems both in and outside of the Ministry and he had launched forward a blistering campaign of hope and pride that was designed to drive people's fears away and center hope and inspiration not just around the Ministry but specifically around the Minister himself. He had been their leader and their hero, but now, for the first time in his tenure in office, the people's confidence in him was shaken and Ivan was forced to bear the results.

Ivan had always known that the public were fickle, he had seen the tides turn enough times on his opponents and adversaries for him to be dismissive of the casual whims of a populace who would never be satisfied for long, but he had honestly thought that he had avoided such arbitrary and mundane pitfalls.

Ivan had not stumbled upon his position, he had worked and maneuvered for years before the second war had even been set to begin. Making the right contacts, placing himself at key events to get the right exposure at the right time, publicly doing jobs that would get him the right recognition and very, very quietly filling those jobs that must be done but no one liked to talk about. He had made a calculated study of former holders of political power and seen how those like Albus Dumbledore had managed to stay largely in the good graces of the Wizarding populace for over fifty years while others like Fudge had only lasted a short time before his weak character was revealed.

Perhaps his master's thesis on the topic had been the rise and fall of Harry Potter. Potter, a boy who had been held up as a beacon of hope and light and hailed as a hero before he was stringing full sentences together and yet had been utterly abandoned by his adoring public the moment it was convenient before being sentenced to Azkaban before he had even turned of age. Ivan knew that the Wizarding World was often harsher with their punishments than the muggle world, but he highly doubted that any other teenager would have received a lifetime sentence for the torture of muggles that had abused them for the majority of their life. They had done it to Potter because they decided among themselves that the boy was meant to be spectacular and good and when it was revealed that he was merely human, they couldn't forgive him.

The sad part is he doubted that Potter had ever realized that he could have saved himself a lot of pain and humiliation if he had just been a bit savvier when it came to managing his own name brand. He should have been trained in how to interview, how to present himself to the public and finally how capitalize off of his established reputation.

And for that, Potter should be blaming Dumbledore, though Ivan severely doubted that it had ever occurred to the boy how much of a disadvantage the old man had given him with the upbringing he'd received. Even if the muggles that the boy had been raised by had turned out to be of decent stock that had raised their nephew with love and affection, there was no possible way in which _muggles_ could have understood the position that Potter held in their world.

Ivan had first noticed the fact that that boy had been thrown in the deep end of the pool when Potter had started appearing the in the press during the TriWizard Tournament. It had been absurdly obvious that no one had taken the time to coach the boy on the finer arts of a proper interview, and even worse no one had even taken the time to teach him the important aspects of conducting yourself in the purview of the wider Wizarding World. It had been clear that Potter had no understanding of Wizarding traditions or customs, no refinement of manners the way a person with status was expected to possess. Many had considered it nearly unforgivable...and perhaps it was but most had yet to figure out that it wasn't a boy of fourteen that should have needed to be exonerated for the terrible crime of ignorance.

In the past few decades, Hogwarts had become extremely muggle friendly. Ostensibly there was meant to be no real difference between those seeing magic for the first time at the age of eleven and those that had been raised by parents that were incapable of managing their lives without it.

When the vultures had changed their tune from cheers to jeers, Potter had been woefully unprepared for the fallout. But that didn't change the fact that there was more to Potter than met the eye. He had been stripped of his power before he had had a chance to try his strength but Ivan had heard of the way Potter had slowly amassed a power base even in the most unlikely environment possible.

He shouldn't have bent to Dumbledore's demands. He should never have allowed Potter out of his control. But he had succumbed to the same temptations that had ultimately destroyed every other political powerhouse he had ever studied- he had finally become overconfident. There had always been three main challenges to his power in the Wizarding World. The worst and most obvious was You-Know-Who himself, but by becoming the lightning rod of the opposition and the natural defense against the greatest threat to the public's safety, it was almost worth the risk the man presented when he considered that he never would have gotten away with taking so much authoritative power without it.

Dumbledore might have presented a larger threat, but as long as the man's key objectives were met...i.e. the protection of the Wizarding World, the man seemed to have little interest in seizing any more power than he already had. A strange foe to combat, as it was often hard to determine how much of a threat the old man really was.

Potter had been an entirely different risk all together. When Ivan had first taken office, he had made it one of his main priorities to ensure that there was no chance of a revival of popular opinion of the Boy-Who-Lived. To be honest, he had first thought he was only being cautious. The Wizarding World had never known a celebrity of the caliber of Potter before. The story was as epic as it was romantic. Ivan was old enough, after all, to remember well those final months of war; the Ministry teetering on the precipice of collapse, neighbor wary of neighbor, the death toll rising daily, the depression that had been caused by the wild dementors running around the country. It had seemed inevitable that the Dark Lord would win and Ivan considered himself lucky beyond measure that he had never finished his arrangements at the time to take the Dark Mark.

If not for a simple infant. An infant that had survived the Killing Curse and rid the world of the most powerful Dark Lord of the century. Potter had destroyed the wizard and in the process done it in a manner that was romantic and...downright magical that the people couldn't help but be enthralled with him.

The boy had been an instant hero, but more than that, he was a symbol. A symbol of hope, innocence and purity winning over evil and corruption. Proof in a cynical world that miracles did happen and that Magic was a true guiding force in the world, not a simple tool that would always respond to the commands of human desire. And then, as though from a fairy tale, Potter was gone, the boy spirited away to the muggle world while his rightful world anxiously awaited his return.

For years the world had waited, and when the boy had finally returned, it had been with less fanfare and celebration than any of them had expected. Their wait had gone unsatisfied and who had borne the disappointment of their lost anticipation? Because in place of the shared adoration for their hero and the information about his life they had all felt entitled to know, they had only been left with rumors.

Rumors that Potter had powers well beyond an average wizard, rumors that he was parseltongue and actually a dark wizard, rumors that he had found the Chamber of Secrets and was the next Heir of Slytherin, rumors about how he had managed to enter himself in a Tournament that was meant for those three years his seniors when no other student had found a way around the restrictions, and rumors about how a boy so young had managed to win after all. And then they heard that he had dueled the Dark Lord and survived yet again. The Ministry had tried to silence the story but those with intelligence had always known the truth.

Ivan was a savvy politician, but he was enough of a wizard to know that there were times when fate picked a vessel to act through. It was something that all proper witches and wizards were raised knowing, which probably meant that ironically enough, Potter knew nothing about it. But as powerful as Fate was, it wasn't infallible and Fate's chosen was not always able to accomplish the mission they had been designed for. Ivan had always been adamant about keeping Potter away from anything that he could have a major influence on, but when he had been offered the prospect of permanently neutralizing Dumbledore so that he would never again have to worry about the man's plans or cater to his whims to placate him enough to not challenge his power, he had crumbled.

But Ivan was no novice when it came to turning a bad situation in his favor. He could still get rid of both Dumbledore and Potter, then he would focus on the real threat to the Wizarding World, just as the people always expected him to. Ivan turned to his latest piece of intelligence. He had been dying to know what Dumbledore could want Potter for after all this time and finally this morning his inquires had paid off. The old man was taking Potter to an old cave to retrieve a magic artifact that was supposedly vital to the defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Ivan thought it was about time for the headlines to read a different story than 'Ministry Event Ruined Amid Security Catastrophe' or whatever in bloody blazes they were calling it. This time tomorrow the Headlines would proudly be proclaiming the excellent response time of the Aurors on any and all potential threats to public safety. Potter would be subdued, Dumbledore neutralized, and Ivan would be the hero once more.

It was time to call in an old friend that had been desperate enough to save his own reputation that he had bowed quickly to Tyson's administration. A man that had always had a bizarre grudge against Potter if no other reason than because he had never understood how to use the boy's fame to his own advantage and instead had allowed petty jealousy to drive him to act recklessly and make the boy his enemy rather than ally.

Cornelius Fudge was not a talented man or a particularly sharp politician, but like all men of limited qualities he had a disproportionate amount of pride. There was no way that the man would allow people to find out that the one thing that his administration was commended for, the uncovering of Potter as a villain, could be undone.

HPHPHPHP

Neville followed the group out of the room thinking over everything that had occurred during the meeting. He couldn't help but feel that Harry's reactions were completely different than how a normal Death Eater should be responding to them. Not only had he helped them that morning with their spells when he hadn't needed to, he had consistently shot down any support for Voldemort at every turn. Merlin, Harry even still called the man by his first name, a feat that Neville himself only managed on a few occasions when he felt a point needed to be made. Furthermore, Neville had seen the way the other man had been nothing short of horrified when he had learned about the Horcruxes his master had made, something that Neville would have thought any Death Eater would only take as further evidence that their 'master' was all powerful.

And then Harry had kicked them out, wanting to speak with the Headmaster alone and though Neville couldn't imagine what the two of them had to say to one another in private, it was clear that Dumbledore had not been surprised by Harry's request. In fact, the elderly man had seemed to expect nothing less than for Harry to want to speak to him.

"I can't believe that Dumbledore told Harry _everything. I_ thought that the entire point was to get him to help us without giving him an opportunity to snitch to his master about what we're doing," Ginny muttered.

"We don't know that Potter's going to say anything, it's not as though he's been able to pass You-Know-Who information in the past," Daniel pointed out reasonably.

"Alright, enough is enough, Myers, I'm tired of you being Potter's cheerleader, so you either explain to us exactly why the two of you are on such good terms or I'm going to start assuming that he's gotten to you. What, are you fucking him and worried that if he tells, you'll be put on suspension for misconduct?"

"Draco!" Ginny and Hermione yelled out at the same time.

The blond looked back at them without guilt or shame for his inquiry. "I think we have more than enough reason to be suspicious," he responded coolly. "Ever since Potter got here, all he's had to say about it is that Potter can take a beating and that he's 'so impressed' by that, but maybe Potter likes it a bit rough? And maybe Myers has grown a bit protective over his little pet."

"Shut up!" Hermione yelled even as Ron shouted, "That's disgusting." The redhead was frowning, but there seemed to be an equal measure of concern mixed with anger. When he turned towards Myers, Neville thought he saw accusation in his eyes. Neville found the response interesting. He didn't think that he could ever forgive Harry for turning his back on the side of the war that his parents had fought on, not when he knew that he himself could never have sided with the Death Eaters after what they had done to his own parents. It was a connection that Neville felt was unique between himself and Harry, the only two members of the Order that missed their entire lives with their parents due to violence, but he also knew that Ron had been even angrier at everything that had happened than Neville had been. However, it seemed that there was still a part of the redhead that instinctively wanted to protect his former friend.

"There's no need to be insulting," Charlie said, his own tone calm and designed to help diffuse the conversation.

"Who's being insulting?" Draco asked with a look of mock innocence. "They're consenting adults, I never said anything against it; after all, Azkaban gets lonely, so we can't be surprised about Potter, and for a guy that has never been shy about the details of his life, Myers has never talked about his own love life. It seems to me that it would explain Myers pathological need to defend Potter at every turn."

" _Pathological_ defense is a bit of an exaggeration, no?" Fleur asked as her husband shot her a stubborn glare. Bill was known for keeping an even keel and having unbiased judgment, but over the last few days, it had seemed that his anger at Harry had only grown as he had seen the emotional toll it taken on his family. It seemed clear that Bill was not about to give Harry the benefit of the doubt about anything anymore. However, Fleur merely lifted an unimpressed eyebrow; she had never forgotten what Harry had once done for her sister and while she didn't usually actively defend Harry to the rest of them, she also had always been clear about her own feelings on the matter.

No one seemed to know what to say for a moment, seeming unsure if they should be jumping to Daniel's defense or not. Neville also felt that Malfoy was exaggerating, because the Slytherin was known to play on emotions to get people to see things the way he wanted them to see it. But that didn't change the fact that Neville also couldn't help but notice that Harry and the Auror shared a strange relationship when one considered that it had once been Daniel's job to help torture Harry and the other prisoners.

"Potter is a prisoner and Myers was his guard, there's no way that you can claim that you weren't insinuating that Myers was abusing his authority. Potter couldn't have said no, which means that's not really consent and for you to claim that Daniel would do that is definitely an insult," Tonks finally said quietly when it seemed as though no one else was willing to say what was on their minds.

Draco shrugged as if to say he hadn't implied that at all, but Neville knew better. He had known the former Slytherin for nearly 10 years and he knew that Draco was trying hard at the moment to discredit the Auror in their eyes. Any suspicion of a sexual relationship between the two men would either have been seen as Myers abusing his position and taking advantage of a vulnerable prisoner who wasn't about to deny someone in authority or that it was consensual and Myers' judgment on Harry from then on would be considered compromised by romantic feelings.

Several people's heads turned, as if automatically, towards Myers who had gone rather suspiciously quiet during the entire exchange.

Myers flushed in a combination of embarrassment under the scrutiny and anger at the accusation. "Potter and I have never _shagged_ and I sure as hell have never forced myself on anyone! I can't believe that I would even have to tell any of you that! Is that what you lot like to do then? Just assume that any accusation that you hear about someone must be true? Because let me tell you one thing about Potter, he's been claiming that he's been innocent the whole time and I never really believed it even when a lot of other people...people that I trusted more than anything…" Myers swallowed, his face red now with barely suppressed emotion, "other people believed him but I kept thinking that if everyone that knew him before claimed that he was guilty then it must be true. But for the first time, I'm starting to see just how everyone he knew could have been wrong about him!"

The room was silent aside from Myers' harsh breathing. No one wanted to make eye contact with the Auror and Neville felt an uncomfortable stirring of guilt worm through his stomach. He found himself, not for the first time over the years, reminding himself why he had been right to walk away from tentative friendship he had been building with the only boy in their class that had ever stood up for him on a consistent basis. Of course he didn't just believe the worst about his friends. He wouldn't do that, he was loyal...he had been a Gryffindor and he had always done the right thing, or tried to do the right thing... And Harry had had a _trial_. The Aurors had pointed out all of the evidence. Even Hermione had agreed that there couldn't be any other explanation and she was much smarter than Neville had ever been; if she knew that Harry was guilty, that was proof in itself.

But he couldn't shake the feeling that Daniel's pain-stricken words had given him. And he couldn't silence the other, much quieter voice in his head that had been growing louder by the day that whispered... _you should have tried harder_.

"No one thinks that you would force someone into a sexual relationship Daniel, not by implication and definitely not by outright force," Charlie finally said gently. "I think there are just a lot of us are that are...surprised that you seem to be on such good terms with him. I mean...you're actually in the minority of people in the Order that didn't know Harry before...everything... and yet somehow you seem to the only person that is on good terms with him."

Neville saw both Ron and Hermione shift their weight uncomfortably, Hermione leaning into Ron's side in a way that Neville thought perhaps wasn't quite conscious on her part. Ron was still frowning heavily and Neville could see a bit of the guilt that he felt reflected in the redhead. Hermione looked less guilty, perhaps more certain of her decisions as she usually was in comparison to himself and Ron, but there was still pain in her expression.

"And speaking for those of us that didn't know Potter before he went to Azkaban, I'm curious why you're willing to give him a chance at all!" Alex Gwynn suddenly shouted, his expression colored angrily.

"Alex-"

"No Charlie, I've tried not to bring this argument up publicly but you're not the only one that I'm upset with! Would anyone like to explain to me how it is that my _six year old son_ was able to stumble upon a murderer and have a little chat with him while no one was paying attention!" He ended with glaring at Draco, who raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

"I presume you have a reason why I would be responsible for who your child is talking to?"

"I think that would have been obvious considering it was your _job_ to be watching Potter yesterday, one you volunteered for, but where were you when he was left alone with my son!"

"I think you could be saying the same to Diggle over there," Draco pointed out as he gestured to the short, bumbling little man who had turned roughly the shade of a tomato at being singled out in front of so many people for dereliction of duty. "They were meant to be taking a nap...I know I locked the door of the room that we use for the nursery."

"Dedalus, I've tried to tell you before, Auggie is six, he doesn't take naps anymore," Alex explained with exasperation.

Diggle flushed in embarrassment and Tonks jumped in quickly to defend him, "Dedalus does the best that he can. He's doing us a favor and we can't expect him to know everything."

"I don't tell you how to raise your son, don't tell me how to raise mine!" Alex proclaimed with unusual temper. The dark haired wizard was generally rather quiet in meetings, often feeling out of place if not directly by Charlie's side, but it was clear that he was truly livid over the idea that the other members had put his son in danger.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Tonks asked her voice lower with anger.

"It's obvious that you're perfectly fine with Potter spending time with your son, but just because you allow your son to spend time with anyone doesn't mean that I am going to put my son in the same kind of danger."

"Don't talk to her like that!" Remus jumped in which caused Charlie to step in front of Alex defensively as he said, "Don't act like you care about her now, Remus."

"Alright, enough, calm down," Fred finally yelled out, his usually friendly face angry. "Charlie, that was out of line and you know it. Alex, I get you're upset mate but going off on Tonks like that is bang out of order."

"We all care about your kids, and we've been trying our best but I reckon that we've all gotten a bit lax about the come and go round here and that includes forgetting that Harry and the kids were in the same place," George cut in, "but even you can admit that Harry hasn't done anything to them."

"You expect me to be comforted by the fact that the convicted murderer that we have in magical restraints because every single one of you is worried about your own safety hasn't done anything to hurt the kids _yet_?"

"And no one made you bring your son into a house that you knew would be occupied by such a person," Severus spoke up smoothly, surprising many people. Snape was known to stay quiet during anything that didn't directly involve him during a meeting. He never socialized and as far as Neville could remember this conversation was the longest the man had stayed inside the walls of Grimmauld Place when Dumbledore himself wasn't directly present or a meeting was in session.

Alex turned, his expression livid but his protests silent for the moment. As was true of any of the members that had once been a former student of Snape's, Neville knew that Alex had always been intimidated by the man. It was a sentiment he could sympathize with very well.

Severus raised an eyebrow, "Am I informing you of a choice that you were unaware of? Potter's arrival has been discussed and planned for weeks, no one sprung his appearance on you. The fact that you decided that leaving your rambunctious and insidiously curious six year old in the same house that a convicted murderer would be staying is your own choice, but do not stand here now and be surprised that the two crossed paths. The house is not _that_ big, they were bound to run into one another eventually. Or are you more upset that your son and Lupin's abandoned son have decided that Potter is their new hero? Perhaps you feel that he is providing them with some sort of guidance or attention that they are lacking from their own parents?" he asked in that arched manner that never required a verbal response.

Remus flushed with anger, and perhaps a bit of embarrassment, but other than balling his fists he said nothing to his former schoolmate. Neville had noticed the two rarely exchanged even passing comments to one another. Alex, however, flushed a dull red and it was clear that Snape had hit the nail on the proverbial head.

"You're defending Potter too now?" Malfoy asked, and was there just a trace of panic in his voice, or was Neville just imagining it?

"Defending Potter? I fail to see how pointing out Mr. Gwynn's failure to set up adequate child care plans that do not include placing his son within calling distance of a convict is defending anyone. But the fact remains, Mr. Malfoy, that while we argue and debate subjects that are ultimately pointless outside of individual pride," he said looking pointedly at Alex, who flushed slightly at the insult, "we seem to breezing by two other rather salient points; firstly, why _weren't_ you watching Potter yesterday? He seems to have enjoyed quite the run of the house under your watch. And secondly...why are you so concerned that anyone might defend him in the first place?"

Malfoy's pale face tinged with that pale pink that Neville remembered from childhood that denoted when he was particularly furious. "I think we should all know if we have a potential traitor among us!"

"Traitor?" Snape questioned smoothly, "A large jump I would say, to move from defense of Potter to traitor to the Order. And one you apparently feel would act very openly as well. I would certainly hope that if there was a traitor in front of my very nose he would be smart enough not to openly side with a person who I already think is my enemy..."

Draco blinked and Neville frowned as the implications of what Snape was saying caught him off guard but before any of them could press Snape further, the door to the drawing room opened once more and Harry stuck his head out. Everyone immediately fell silent as the subject of their conversation entered the room, but rather than walk further inside, he called from the doorway. "Snape…" he paused and a calculating expression crossed his pale face, one that Neville did not recall seeing from their school days. When he spoke next, Neville had the impression that his words were designed to be overheard and speculated on. "How do you feel about being a bonder for an Unbreakable Vow?" Neville heard Hermione's sharp intake of breath, even as quite a few others started muttering.

Unlike Draco, who looked tense and uncomfortable from their confrontation, Snape's expression was as inscrutable as it had always an uncharacteristic display of openness from a man that had developed a notorious reputation for revealing as little information as possible, instead seemed to follow Harry's lead.

"And what promise are you making that you are willing to give your life for should your demands not be met?"

"I never said it was my vow, Professor."

Neville got to witness the rather extraordinary event of his former professor actually smirking as he silently acquiesced and followed Harry back out of the room. The speculation that followed was heated and rather outlandish. No one could begin to imagine what Potter could offer Dumbledore to get the man to agree to an Unbreakable Vow. Furthermore, why had the Headmaster's word alone not satisfied Harry with whatever deal the two were striking? It seemed to Neville that between the two of them, the Headmaster was certainly not the one whose integrity should be called into question.

They were interrupted from their debate by the noisy arrival of Teddy and Auggie, who were both in tears and it was clearly caused by frustration at one another.

Auggie ran up to Alex and Charlie and Teddy was sobbing nearly incoherently at Tonks, both arguing their case to the people who they were sure would back them up. It was a confusing mass of words that jutted between "he stole my" and "my turn" "he won't share" and "I want it!"

Auggie was screaming that the toy was his and that he was playing with it and Teddy was wailing that it was meant to be his turn and Auggie was 'being mean'.

As perhaps was inevitable when it came to the Order, several people were quick to offer their opinions on the matter and perhaps just as inevitably, they were conflicting in nature. Several people seemed to believe that if it was Auggie's toy, then he had no obligation to share it if he was already enjoying it. Others felt that the boy needed to share, especially since Teddy was younger and Auggie should 'set a good example'. Neville stayed quiet, he didn't have children and entertained no delusions that he knew how to take care of them in any real capacity. He found small children hopelessly intimidating and was very happy that his tentative romance with Hannah Abbott did not seem to be heading in the direction of marriage and children for some time to come. His parents had gotten married in their early twenties and his mother had only worked as an Auror for a few years before she had taken time off for maternity leave. Neville knew his grandmother would be thrilled if he had children in the next couple of years, but he would much rather devote his energy to completing a Mastery in Herbology than worry about child rearing at the moment.

It was at the height of the argument that a pale faced Harry and sour faced Snape re-emerged from the closed drawing room. They immediately grabbed the adult's attention, but it was with a very different emotion that both boys cried out, "Harry!"

Harry looked up with a look of vague surprise, as though he could not process why the boys would be calling him and Neville was once again given the impression that he had had quite a few times, that Harry had trouble focusing on more than one thing at a time. It was as though his brain could only process so much information at once and he was consciously devoting his energy to quality over quantity.

"Hey there mates...what's happened?" Harry asked them in that oddly casual tone that most people would never use with children as it made them seem as though they were equals.

Neville experienced a rare moment of spite. Harry had strangely become the boys' hero, Alex had not been wrong about that, and it was an attitude that should be discouraged. Neville might know precious little about children, but he felt confident that he would at least be a better influence on the children than an Azkaban inmate and murderer.

Both boys started to immediately plead their case for Harry who was now looking at the renewed tears with a slightly bemused expression. This was one of those situations where Harry wouldn't be able to please both sides, one of the boys was going to be disappointed and soon both of them would discover that their icon was in fact human after all.

"Auggie, Harry shouldn't be involved in this," Alex said quickly. "I've told you before it's always nice to share your toys…"

"No! You're not being fair, you won't even listen!"

"Young man, what I have I told you about your attitude, you don't tell me 'no'," Alex scolded.

"I hate you!" Auggie yelled stubbornly. Neville grimaced, he remembered once telling his grandmother the same thing when he had been a little younger than Auggie was now. It was not something that he ever repeated to her. Alex though, seemed more shocked than angry and when he seemed too stunned to respond, it was Harry that interceded. "You don't mean that Auggie. You might be mad at your Dad but that doesn't mean that you don't love him and you know it doesn't stop him from loving you."

"He never listens! It's my book! Mine! And he doesn't even care!"

"And I never said that you couldn't use it!" Alex argued, suddenly frustrated.

"Teddy why don't you tell me what happened?" Harry asked, cutting Auggie off before further argument could continue. For a moment, Neville thought that Alex was going to insist that Harry stay out of it, but with a sharp look from Charlie, he seemed resigned to allow someone else deescalate the situation for him, even if that person was Harry.

"But…"

"I'll ask you next, Auggie," Harry said calmly, giving the young boy a small smile, even if it was strained by the fact he clearly had other things on his mind at the moment. "But I have to hear both sides first. When you don't hear what the other person thinks then sometimes you wind up hurting your friends' feelings by accident because you're not understanding what the other person wants from you."

Auggie looked defiant, but kept quiet for the moment as Teddy explained that he wanted a turn with the book but Auggie wouldn't let him play.

Harry nodded, "It doesn't feel good to be left out, does it? My cousin and his mates used to do it to me all the time and I hated it. But I don't think Auggie meant for you to be sad. Auggie, why don't you tell me what happened now?"

Auggie held up a children's book, "Mrs. Weasley bought me this book, it's called 'Look For Snitch' and it's the coolest book ever because you have to catch Snitch as it moves and you know Harry, _you know_ I want to be a Seeker but I can't fly here or even go outside ever! So I gotta practice with my book if I'm gonna play for Hufflepuff one day and Teddy isn't gonna be a Seeker, he's gonna be a beater like you said so he doesn't need to practice with the Snitch and I don't want him to rip the pages!"

Harry nodded, "I can understand that too. Teddy, don't you get excited when you have a new toy that's all yours? Don't you want to finish playing with it before you let someone else use it?"

"He's apposed to share!"

"It's nice to share but that also means you have wait for your turn to come up. Was Auggie finished with the book?"

Teddy shook his head, tears dripping from his eyes as a sob made his small chest heave. Harry winced and Neville was glad to see that despite his cool exterior there was a part of him that was unsure about what he was doing. "Hey mate, you don't have to cry, but I think you hurt Auggie's feelings when you wanted the toy he was playing with. How about this...Teddy, why don't you watch Auggie for the next turn and Auggie you explain just how you look for the snitch and tell Teddy about the rules of the game. I know I said he'll be a Beater one day but Teddy can be anything that he wants to be, and so can you. Sometimes you'll play Seeker but sometimes you play Chaser or Keeper and it will help you get better at the whole game. Teach Teddy how to be a great Seeker just like you are and one day he'll teach you something that you haven't learned yet."

"How can Teddy teach me?" Auggie asked sounding utterly bewildered. "He's little!"

Harry smiled, "he won't be forever, and you might be surprised what people younger than you can teach you. But my point is, once you explain to Teddy how to play without worrying about him ripping the pages, then both of you play and see who catches it first. It's always more fun to play with a friend than by yourself, that way you both get to share."

Both boys were nodding eagerly and Auggie stuck out his hand to pull Auggie out the room to start playing.

Harry looked up once more to see several people looking at him with surprise. "Let me guess...it never occurred to a single one of you to hear them out first before you made a decision. Can't say I'm surprised."

"Mr. Potter, as much as many of these people would benefit from a lesson in refined judgement, we are on a schedule and unfortunately that does not include time for correcting a lifetime of misconceptions." The professor turned to address the room, "If we can get on with our agenda, Potter has agreed to help us after settling his conditions with the Headmaster. Mr. Moody I believe you had your own particulars you wanted enacted."

Moody had been unusually quiet, observing everything from a far corner of the room but snapped back to life at the call to action. "Seems you learned something from us after all Potter, because you and I have similar ideas if how this relationship is going to work. I don't think that either one of us is kidding ourselves into thinking that you're here purely out of the goodness of your heart or for auld lang syng with your old friends. But as long as we get the job done, I'll be satisfied, and to that end, if you want the magical restraints off and your wand returned then you're going to be making your own Unbreakable Vow."

Harry's face was impassive but his posture was straight and his eyes hard as he gave a stiff nod of understanding. "That depends on what you expect me to agree to. I can admit that I want these fucking cuffs off and my wand back but if you think I'll trade anything for it, you're out of your damn mind."

A look of amusement flitted across Moody's face but was so fast it might have been twitch. "You agree to help us to the best of your ability, to not put up any resistance when the job is done and you have to turn yourself back in, and you agree not to attack anyone in the Order while you have possession of your wand."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"I'll agree on the condition that if I feel threatened by someone in the Order I can defend myself," Harry leveraged.

"No one in the Order is going to attack you!" Malfoy scoffed.

"Then I see no reason why I would have to defend myself. But I don't want to take any chances. Constant vigilance and all that, you know."

Moody scowled and gave the man in front of him a long considering look. "You said if you feel threatened, that's too loose a condition. If someone strikes first you can defend yourself, short of that…"

"No," Harry answered firmly, his expression unwavering. Moody looked as though he was about to argue but Harry spoke over his protests. "It's a magical vow not a simple promise, which means that I can't claim that I thought that I was in danger when I wasn't but I'm also not going to wait around for one of you to decide that I've served my purpose and off me when my back is turned."

"We would never-" Hermione started, sounding slightly desperate.

"It's a terrible feeling, isn't it? When other people assume the worst about you? You've all made your feelings about me perfectly clear. You think I betrayed you and everything that you decided that I should stand for. Which, by the way," Harry added, "it's one thing coming from them," he said as gestured to Ron, Hermione and the other people in the room that had gone to school with them, "because at least they actually knew how I felt about Voldemort but for the rest of you, you have a hell of a lot of nerve claiming that I betrayed something that you never even bothered to see if I supported or not. You were all anxious to have a kid do your dirty work for you and when it came time to do it yourselves you were angry."

"That's not why we we're angry," Bill replied with a clipped tone.

"Yes right, I'm a huge disappointment but the point stands, there are only a few of you even have a reason to think that you know me and after all this time I think it's fair to say that none of you claim as much now. Which is quite true for me as well, I don't know what any of you have been up to and from what I've seen so far, most of you leave a lot to be desired so it comes to this- if I feel threatened, I will attack. Short of that, I think we can both walk away happy. I get my wand, you get a part of Voldemort's soul."

"He's right," Ron said suddenly. "If none of us are planning to attack him he has no reason to feel threatened and the magical vow won't allow him to lie about it later. Just agree to the conditions and get on with it," he finished throwing his hands up with exasperation.

It was decided and Moody came forward to remove the cuffs so that Harry could have access to his magic for the bond to take hold. They would give him his wand after the fact. Neville found himself impressed with the other man's self-possession, if he had been cut off from his wand for nearly four years he doubted that he would have held out during the negotiations at all.

HPHPHP

Harry released the breath he had been holding as he realized that they were bowing to his demands. There was no way he would agree to a vow in which he could never fight against Malfoy and now all he needed to do was wait until he felt that blond wizard would strike.

Moody stepped forward with his wand and Harry raised his hands. As the bonds fell away he couldn't hold back the groan of relief that came with it. After the initial cut off from his magic the cuffs themselves weren't painful...per se. But there was a distinct feeling of wrongness about him. It had felt as if something vital had been stolen from him and only now that it was returned did he notice how much it had truly hurt him to lose it.

The words of the vow were simple and straight forward and then it was time for the moment he had been waiting for since it had first been mentioned to him. A muggle could never begin to understand what a wizard experienced when they were separated from their wand. If magic was a person's air, then their wand was their lungs. Mr. Weasley came forward with a box and held out the wand. Harry let out a shaky breath, trying to control himself in front of the large audience, even as his hand trembled with anticipation.

The moment his fist closed around the handle he felt an electric current of energy, brilliantly colored sparks of every color burst from the wand causing several people to cover their eyes from the dazzling display. He felt energized, whole. It was the greatest feeling in the world, better than sex. Better than anything he could remember feeling. He felt in that moment that if he said the words he would not need to concentrate on a memory to form a Patronus because he could not remember feeling happier.

When he settled down he could see the look of awe on several people's faces and Dumbledore stood in the doorway, "Wizards that have been away from their wands for quite some time often have emotional reunions, though as I have said before, the connection that Harry has with his wand seems extremely unique in my experience."

"We need to leave, now," Severus said with urgency and Harry suddenly remembered that Snape had information about Voldemort going after his Horcruxes.

"Right, what's the plan?"

"Several of us will be accompanying you-" Dumbledore's words were cut off by the arrival of hawk patronus and the voice of Madame Bones spoke, "Albus you told me to contact you in the event of an emergency and I need you. The Ministry is under siege. The Department Heads are being overrun, I need your help immed.." it was cut off by the sound of shouted hex and it was clear the Head of the DMLE was putting up a fight for her life.

"New plan, I need a select group of people to accompany myself and Harry to the cave, we cannot allow Voldemort to distract us and the Horcrux is the of the utmost importance," Dumbledore said quickly. "The rest of you will go the Ministry and help mount a defense."

"I'll go to the Ministry," Ron and Neville offered together even as Ginny and Hermione both stepped forward to go to the cave. Ginny had a particularly fierce look in her eyes and Harry suspected that she was determined to see for herself what he was planning to do. Harry wasn't particularly sure why Ginny of all people had taken such offense to him, but she seemed to have been under the impression that he had promised her something that he had failed to deliver. This attitude above all else annoyed him because as far as he could remember he had never showed a particular interest in Ginny. He had been polite to her because he had seen no reason not to. He had saved her life because he had been the only one capable of it at the time. But as far he was concerned Ginny had never gone out of her way to prove herself a true and loyal friend. While she had certainly had a crush on him that had never stopped her from ignoring him like the rest of them during their Fourth Year and refusing to speak up in his Second Year when she knew more about the Chamber than anyone had thought.

It was decided quickly that he, Dumbledore, Hermione and Ginny would go to the cave to retrieve the Horcrux while the rest of the Order went to defend the Ministry. Harry wondered which scene Voldemort himself would appear at. He doubted that he would leave the defense of his soul fragment to anyone but himself and yet as much as Harry longed to confront the man that had destroyed his life, he knew that he wasn't ready yet. With his wand, he was stronger than he had been in years but when the time came for him to meet Voldemort again, he knew that only one of them would make it out alive. And Harry knew that at that time, he would no longer be able to claim that he was innocent of murder. Despite that, he knew that when he killed Voldemort his conscience would be clear.

 **A/N: Thanks so much for the positive reviews and especially those that even went out of their way to make up for the bad ones! Also, sorry for my stupid mistake and again thanks to those that pointed out that I seemingly miraculously brought Kingsley Shacklebolt and Hestia Jones back from the dead. I admit that I had written those lines before I had decided on their deaths in the Ministry attack and forgot to change them, it is now fixed.**

 **Thanks again to mylittlehazmat for her wonderful help :) Good news, bad news situation, I have finally finished my first story so I am no longer juggling two stories at once and can devote all my time to this one, bad news is all my pre-written material is now exhausted. I am going to try to keep the update schedule below the two week mark but I can't guarantee it**


	16. Calamity at the Cave

**Chapter 16: Calamity at the Cave**

Harry had never learned how to apparate, it was just one of the many common skills that he had missed out on due to his aborted magical education. Coming of age in Azkaban, even with having been lucky enough to have Felix as a cellmate, had left him with a distinct hole in his knowledge. However, it had left him with a rather strange amalgamation of skills.

Under Felix's patient tutoring, he had gotten better at spell theory, something that he had never been interested in at Hogwarts and hadn't really ever had the mindset for anyway. Harry had always done better in his practical work than in theory or writing essays. For him, magic had always seemed more innate than his professors had spoken about. Something that one _did_ , not thought overly much about, as they seemed to feel was necessary in order to accomplish the same results. However, once he was unable to use a wand or perform any magic inside the draining walls of Azkaban, theory had been all that he had left of a world that had been his salvation from the Dursleys at the age of eleven. He could admit that at first he had mainly listened to Felix out of boredom or desperation to focus his mind on something- _anything_ \- other than the agony of his current surroundings, but as time passed, under the guidance of a mentor who truly inspired a passion for learning, Harry's latent academic curiosity had blossomed.

It had led him to having a working knowledge of most spell theory and magical propriety laws as well as a solid base of knowledge in practical potions. He would also wager that he had a broader muggle education than any of his former classmates could boast, with the possible exception of Hermione whom Harry could imagine had ensured had a rather extensive knowledge of both worlds. But most importantly he had listened and watched with great attention to every Auror lesson he had been exposed to for over three years. He had seen all the common mistakes, heard how each instructor had their own style and criticisms and felt confident that he could perform the practical spells without issue. He had learned strategy, curses, field healing, blocks and basic warding. Things that most NEWT level students never learned, even if Harry had never learned how to conjure, apparate or perform human transfiguration the way every recruit had already mastered before even walking in the door.

Therefore, when Hermione took his arm and apparated him to the cliffside that led to the cave that they would be entering, he paid careful attention to everything that she did, hoping that he would learn something. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to glean much more than the sensation of the actual transport itself. And what an uncomfortable feeling it was.

As the world righted itself, Harry struggled to keep the bile that was rising rapidly in his throat from exiting. He swallowed thickly and took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment to stop the lightheaded feeling he was experiencing after being suffocated through a narrow tube.

"You've never apparated before have you? I'd forgotten..." Hermione winced in sympathy.

Harry nodded, keeping a dry comment about missing out on a wide range of experiences when you were sentenced to a super-maximum prison as a teenager to himself.

"It's horrible the first time, especially when you do it side-along. It's why they say you should only take small children with side-along if it's an emergency, though I hear that some people insist on doing it anyway just because it's convenient!" She huffed, clearly irritated, before coming back to her original point. "But it gets easier," she explained in that familiar lecturing tone, only slightly faster than normal due to how uncomfortable she was about speaking to him regarding things that any other adult wizard would already know.

Harry gave her a rather vague nod followed by what he hoped was a polite smile, though it probably came out as an annoyed grimace. She was trying, he could admit that much to himself, even if he felt that it perhaps it was too little, too late. He didn't think it would ever be the same between them, or with any of his former friends. This wasn't simply a matter of them disbelieving in him or failing to double check the evidence, they turned their backs on him and he had suffered for it for years. Too much had happened for him to go back at this point but he felt that he needed to acknowledge, if only to himself, that unlike many of the others, Hermione hadn't tried to insult him. She hadn't gone out of her way to remind him again and again that he was untrustworthy or a murderer.

On the other hand, she hadn't made any actual overtures of friendship or even shown any remorse for her actions either. If asked honestly, Harry was still certain that Hermione would defend her decisions till her last breath. After all- they had been doing the _right_ thing, never mind the fact that 'right' in this case meant locking up an innocent man and refusing to hear his side of the story. However, the fact remained that she, at the very least, seemed to understand that he was there to help them and seemed to feel that things should at least be civil for the time being.

Ron, Harry was pleased yet very surprised to note was much the same, but many of the others seemed to follow Remus and Ginny's lead that he was their enemy and nothing more. They glared at him, insulted him and remained suspicious of his every action. Harry had to admit that it was nice to have a few people that had the decency to remember that he was more than a prison inmate. That even if they believed that he had done the worst, they knew that a person wasn't entirely defined by the worst thing that they had done. He was still angry with them. He didn't think he could ever truly get past what they had condemned him to, even if it had been done ignorantly, but was it fair to lump the entire Order into a single entity? Was that any better than what they had been doing to him? He wasn't sure and he wasn't prepared to unpack that emotional baggage yet. Better to stay angry at them all than allow himself to start thinking that even slightly decent behavior was grounds for forgiveness.

As more a means of distraction from having to acknowledge anything personal about himself or how he was feeling about Hermione's attempt at comforting him, he looked around at his surroundings for the first time. Dumbledore was already moving with a brisk stride towards a wide opening in the rock that was roughly 200 meters away.

"You said that Tom Riddle came here as a kid?" Harry asked, using the statements as excuse to glance around for the first time at surroundings fully. It was a surprisingly pretty spot when one considered that they were there to retrieve a piece of evil soul from a mass murderer. The bluffs overlooked a rocky seaside with a thicket of forest off to the side that looked as though it had quite a few hiking trails. The trees were lush and green and he could see why it would have been quite enjoyable for a group of London children to be brought out here for a day trip. Plenty to see and explore, plenty of mischief and adventures to be had to those that were willing.

"Yeah, why is that important?" Ginny asked, for once with more curiosity than accusation in her tone. Though perhaps she was simply uncreative enough to imagine what ulterior motives Harry could have for asking.

Harry shrugged, "It's not. It's just that it would have been nice to have been taken on holiday as a kid. I always suspected that my uncle was lying when he said I should be grateful I hadn't being sent to an orphanage," there was twinge of humor in his voice but that didn't make the words any less true.

Ginny seemed to falter slightly in her walk as though she had thought about saying something in response, but instead she straightened her posture and quickened her pace. There was dismissal in the gesture, not so much of him but of the twinge of emotion she had apparently experienced. To Harry, it was a sign that she was not going to allow herself to view him as a victim. Understanding Harry might just justify his actions, it might just give her reason to stop her relentless anger and it seemed to Harry the more that he observed Ginny, anger had been propelling her forward for a long time- an emotion no doubt fueled and controlled by her unhealthy relationship with Malfoy.

For his part, Harry had not spoken about his childhood in search of pity, he had no need for it. As a child, Harry had longed for someone to see what the Dursleys were doing to him. He had hoped and wished and even prayed during the long hours he had spent locked up in his small cupboard that some long lost relative or even just a neighbor would realize that he was being locked away and ignored, neglected and harmed by the people that were charged with his care. Even when he had rejoined the Wizarding World he would have loved for one of the professors to have told him that he deserved better than a small bedroom with bars and feeling lucky on the rare occasions he not only gotten three meals but ones that were actually _satisfying_ for a growing teenager. But he had survived it, and it was in the past.

For a long time he had strived simply to never think about the Dursleys at all, preferring to concentrate his energy on what he considered his real life- the one in the Wizarding World. Living with the Dementors, even only two times a week, had brought up every awful memory from his childhood, forcing him to confront the true extent of their neglect and hostility. And in seeing it all laid out in front of him, Harry had learned that the real source of his misery hadn't come from any particular incident, or traumatic event as many people might have pointed to. There had been nothing singularly horrific his relatives had done. Vernon had never beaten him bloody nor had there been any epiphany inspired moment in which Harry could say that he had finally discovered that he was unloved and unwanted as a muggle film might have done. Instead he had learned that there was a feeling that his whole childhood had been one long mundane stream of misery. Mundane. It sounded terribly boring. Ordinary even. Wasn't abuse usually more...dramatic? Harry wasn't sure, but he knew that the Dursleys had been abusive.

The Dursleys had hated him on sight and had made it their mission in life to prove that Harry was nothing but a burden on their family. One would imagine that constant exposure to Dementors with such a vast array of memories would have driven a person utterly mad. Oddly enough, however, it seemed that continual reminders of what he had suffered day after mundane day seemed to have had a numbing effect on his psyche. He had long since been able to accept the fact that the Dursleys had never been his true family and he wasn't going to allow himself to give the Dursleys any more attention than they had ever offered him. But that didn't stop lingering feelings of resentment of what could have been had they only gotten past their inborn prejudices or what they had caused him to suffer at their hands. Nor did it blunt the pain of realizing how it felt when people that you considered your true family had turned their backs on you. If anything, the more apathetic he felt towards the Dursleys, the more of his anger was reserved for the Order.

Hermione shot him a sad smile and after a moment she said, "I imagine Voldemort had a nicer childhood than he ever appreciated." Ginny looked sharply at Harry as though she expected him to jump to his supposed 'master's' defense but any response Harry might have had was cut off as wizards appeared around the flank of the cave. They had clearly been waiting for their arrival and Harry's first thought was that the Death Eaters had decided to prepare an ambush rather than moving the Horcrux on their own, perhaps Voldemort had not even given his most trusted Inner Circle the ability to enter his protections, but then he noticed that he had been wrong- it was Ministry officials that were awaiting attack.

"How..." Ginny whispered.

"Someone from your incredibly loyal Order obviously betrayed our position," Harry answered grimly, his hand tightening on his wand in remembered instinct. It had been a long time since he had used actual magic and he suddenly realized that he really should have tried out a spell or two before leaving. Seeing tactics and spells performed was vastly different than doing it for yourself.

"Harry Potter, your conditional release has been officially revoked by order of the Minister, you are hereby ordered to surrender, if you fail to give yourself up peacefully, you will be taken by force," called out a voice that Harry had not heard for four years but was still painfully familiar to his ears. In spite of being unceremoniously thrown out of office, Cornelius Fudge was still somehow just as pompous sounding as he had always been.

Harry's hand tightened further still on his wand, this time in restraint of doing something incredibly foolish...like attacking the Aurors that had come to backup Fudge.

"Cornelius, I was promised a week to fulfill the task I need Harry to perform, there is no reason to call him back early," Dumbledore said calmly. Harry noticed several Aurors straighten at the sight of the Headmaster and he wondered how much information many of them had been given about his 'release'. Likely many of the Aurors present were under the impression that he had done something illegal to obtain it and it was their duty to return him to his 'rightful place', no doubt the appearance of the highly respected Headmaster was giving a few of them pause, or at least understandable confusion.

"No reason?" Fudge asked incredulously. "That boy has been out of prison for three days and already the Ministry has suffered the greatest attack it's seen in years!"

"You mean the largest attack since _you_ were Minister and had Voldemort running around the place like he owned it, whileyou pretended he was the bogeyman?" Harry asked, his eyes taking in the names and current positioning of the Aurors. He was both relieved and surprised to note that there was no one present that was high ranking or especially highly skilled from what he could see. As much as he hated the draw of his name, he had expected the Ministry to pull out all the stops for his 'recapture', but it seemed that Voldemort's latest attack had distracted the Ministry and caused them to send their less able fighters after him while their top people were sent to defend the Ministry itself from Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Perhaps he should consider sending the man a thank you note. Nevertheless, Fudge had not lost his flair for the dramatic any more than he had lost his sense of self-importance, he was accompanied by a half dozen fighters, each done up in fully Auror regalia which Harry knew to contain shield charms on the cloaks, which were only used in what were considered 'high risk' situations.

"Don't make things worse, Harry," Hermione muttered next to him, lips barely moving.

Harry didn't glance at her, keeping his attention on the raised wands directed at him but answered out of the corner of his mouth, "I doubt they'll decide that I can go on my way if I'm polite enough."

"Surrender Potter! Don't make things difficult," Auror Mayweather called out and Harry gave her a purposefully unimpressed look.

He was unsurprised to see Mayweather or her partner, Flowers, across from him. The two were partners in life as well as well as on the force and were rarely separated. Their loyalty to one another was just about the only admirable thing that could said about either of them. They were older Aurors, ones that had been assigned to the early rounds of Auror shifts at Azkaban, ones that had assigned before the Training Program had been installed and the position had been largely meant as babysitting detail. Though it had never been confirmed to him, Harry knew that the two of them had gotten the post originally because they were unskilled in field work and were either being punished or brushed aside. Their spells were weak and ineffectual, they had poor attention to detail and their ability to observe their surroundings was so bad that it must have presented a danger to themselves, and probably to the public at large.

However, the middle-aged Aurors had found their niche under the new regime. Both Mayweather and Flowers had always been staunch Ministry loyalists even when they had been overlooked by their superiors. Tyson had ushered in an era where loyalty and unquestioned compliance were seen as the epitome of a high ranking officer. While their skills were certainly limited, it was easy to demonstrate on targets that couldn't fight back. From what Harry had seen, neither one of them had any capacity for compassion for those they viewed as criminals, and after years of being ridiculed by the other Aurors for their paltry skill set, they seemed to thrive in an environment that rewarded _years_ of service rather than quality.

"Pleasure to see you as well, Denise," Harry called back to her, enjoying the anger that crossed her face as he dared to address her with such familiarity. Harry was quite furious with his old Headmaster at the moment but he had also learned a few tricks from the man- polite dismissal could often be a painful insult.

"If you don't surrender the prisoner Dumbledore, you will be considered in breach of your agreement!" Fudge called out once more, panic lancing through his voice.

"Cornelius, I have always tried to be reasonable with you and yet once again you set yourself on a course in which the two of us must be at odds. If you recall, there was a time not so very long ago when I told you that if you listened to me you would be remembered as the greatest Minister of Magic of all time…but you did not listen to my advice, Cornelius. Are you certain you wish to repeat your same mistakes?" Dumbledore's voice was light but there was that note of steel that Harry had seen from time to time and his hand relaxed ever so marginally on his wand. The Unbreakable Vow that he made Dumbledore take should ensure that the man prioritized his promises to Harry above any other but Dumbledore had never been a man that had feared death and such a man was difficult to predict.

"I have made my choices, Albus and I will not be foolish enough to side against our Minister!" Fudge's face was red and he had swollen with indignation at the reminder that the position of Minister was no longer his to call his own.

The Aurors flanking Fudge drew up their wands as one and Harry readied himself to make a stand. He would not go back to Azkaban without a fight, not now and if he could help it, not ever.

Before the Aurors could launch their attack, however, Snape's promised ambush arrived. Bellatrix alongside her demented family members, Rabastan and Rodolphus, as well as Dolohov, Nott and half a dozen others apparated out of the darkness, armed and ready to protect the cave that housed a precious artifact for their beloved master.

"What a welcome reception!" Bellatrix called out with mad glee. She was exactly as Harry's dementor induced memories had always shown her to be. Crazy and vicious, she seemed positively gleeful that she had run into not only Harry and Albus Dumbledore but an entire squadron of Aurors as well to fight. On her chest Harry could just make out a dark colored vial and he suspected that it contained Voldemort's blood. So Voldemort had decided to entrust his Horcrux to his most rabid supporter after all. Harry had been hoping that the madman would be too paranoid to leave access to the object to anyone, even an insane fanatic like Bellatrix, but he should have known better. With his track record with luck, of course they wouldn't be safe simply by making it inside the cave.

"Oh and if it isn't my darling boy!" Bellatrix squealed, "Little baby Potter. It's been _so_ long since we've gotten to see each other!" She fawned in the high pitched little screech that had always grated on Harry like nails on a chalkboard. "Harry, lovely, have you missed me as much as I've missed you? Do you miss our little lessons on the Dark Arts? You should have paid more attention."

Harry felt more than saw Hermione and Ginny tense beside him and knew how the remark sounded. They couldn't possibly realize that the only 'lesson' that Bellatrix had given him was after he had failed to cast the Cruciatus on her properly in the Ministry Atrium. The same curse that he had been forced to confess to out of context prior to his trial. They couldn't know that even though it had failed, Harry had felt sick with guilt for even going that far for days after the fact. The grief of Sirius' death had been the only thing that had blunted the pain of conscience, only for it come back in full forced under the effects of the Dementors.

"I learned all I needed from you and more," Harry told her sincerely. It was the one thing that Harry had had been able to grasp onto in prison. Something few people could possibly understand. Harry had never become what they had expected him to become. He had never turned into the kind of person that he had always hated as a child. Harry had remained true to the person that he had decided his parents would have been proud of at the age of eleven and if that meant that he would never be able to unleash the kind of pain onto others that they had unleashed on him, then so be it. He would never let them win that way.

Harry used the momentary outrage of the Aurors at his acknowledgement of Bellatrix's taunts as a distraction to edge himself into the position that he wanted. Harry had spent years studying the Aurors but he had also been subjected to countless nights of visions of torture at the hands Lord Voldemort. He knew the Death Eaters that were assembled nearly as intimately as the Aurors that were standing adjacent from them. He knew the formations that they were likely to use and despite the shiver of fear that seemed to crawl down his back at being surrounded on all sides by enemies, a jolt of adrenaline also shot him as well as he realized that he could use all of this knowledge to his advantage. He needed the Aurors and Death Eaters to engage one another while he and Dumbledore made their way to the cave. If Hermione and Ginny made it as well he supposed he should consider it a bonus but at the moment he wasn't placing it a priority.

For now, he needed more time and his eyes lighted on a familiar face in the crowd. "Hello Evan, I see you've made yourself some new friends. I thought Azkaban was designed so that you see the error of your ways, not increase your repertoire of crimes," Harry addressed a bulky, middle aged man towards the back of the group. Evan Marshall had been serving the last year of a five year stint when Harry had first arrived in Azkaban. Both of them had been relegated to 'medium security', Harry because he had been convicted while still underage, whereas Marshall had been there because even though his offense had been non-violent in nature, it had been his third offense of grand theft of enchanted materials which kicked him up from the usual minimal level that he had served in after past offenses.

In spite of Marshall's propensity for unlawful acts and generally rough exterior, Harry had discovered that he rather liked the man, relatively speaking of course. In that first year, he had been one of the few inmates that had not gone after Harry for mere entertainment. Evan had largely left Harry to his own devices, only stooping to doing anything when he felt that staying neutral put himself in danger of alienating the rougher prisoners, and even then Harry had at least recognized that the man took no personal satisfaction in hurting others. It was, perhaps, a ridiculously low bar for liking someone, but at the time Harry had had precious few options in terms of tolerable company and one of the many life lessons that Azkaban had managed to impart on him is that while the prison was on an island, no man was designed to be one of his own making indefinitely.

Harry knew quite well that Evan was not a brave man, but had often been surprised when he had seen how unapologetically upfront the older man always about it. It had been a rather novel concept for Harry, who had come directly from Gryffindor House where there was no considered no greater dishonor than being thought a coward by others. Marshall had spent the whole of his adult life, and likely more than that prior to that as well, making do in poor circumstances. It was something that Harry understood well enough from his own experiences, though his methods were quite different. While Harry had spent a difficult life stubbornly maintaining his own identity and version of the truth at all costs, Marshall was a firm believer in following the path of least resistance. The man had learned a long time ago that he was not a force to be reckoned with by any means and instead had devoted himself to the art of keeping out of harm's way, a dangerous tendency when Harry compared it in his mind to Peter Pettigrew, but by and large Evan was not a particularly cruel person. On occasion, and when they were alone, the older man had even tried to act out the role of mentor to Harry as the youngest prisoner in the cell block; however, Harry rather felt that both of them could agree that good intentions aside, the man was ill-equipped for the role.

"I told you before Harry, you have to choose a side and stick to it. Those that sit on the fence get their arse poked by the spikes," Evan said and it seemed to Harry that there was real regret in his voice.

It was advice that Evan had tried to give Harry when the younger man had refused to confess to the crimes he had been sentenced for. Harry had managed to make himself even more unpopular among the inmates when he had continually refused to acknowledge the power and supremacy of the 'Dark Lord', continuing to call him Voldemort as a point of pride. The Death Eaters that knew of Harry's innocence were angry that he wouldn't break, the prisoners that had thought him guilty found him uppity. The guards had been even more upset than the prisoners. Evan had thought that Harry was trying to play both sides, 'running back to Dumbledore's friends' after he had been caught and been punished for working with the Dark Lord.

It had seemed odd to Harry at the time that Evan had never seemed to care one way or other if Harry had been a true Death Eater, but instead had only cautioned him that it was dangerous to change sides over and over. Evan had never quite seemed to grasp the fact that Harry had not in fact been playing both sides or hoping for the best deal that he could make. At the time, and in spite of the relative kindness that he had been shown, Harry had been impatient and annoyed that Evan seemed to have absolutely no loyalty or sense of right and wrong but overtime he had grown sympathetic to a rather weak man that learned a lot of poor lessons from a particularly harsh life.

"And I've told you Evan...I picked my side a very long time ago and I have no intention of changing."

It was a conversation that they had had many times but Harry doubted that Evan had ever really understood Harry's position. Evan was a weak man that felt he had limited choices. He was a follower, plain and simple, one that would have swayed with the tide if he thought it might bring him back to the shore eventually.

Which meant that a man like Evan would never- _could never_ \- understand that Harry hadn't chosen to side with Dumbledore nor was he siding with the Order. He hadn't chosen to side with the friends that had turned their backs on him when he had needed him. He certainly hadn't picked the Wizarding World as a whole because they had never once offered him help or comfort when he had needed it.

Harry had chosen to side with himself. To stand up for what he believed in to the best of his ability and to not allow others to dictate his view on morality. Four years in Azkaban had taught Harry to value freedom above anything else and, in the end, true freedom was as much about deciding your own values and your own destiny as it was about being out of prison or even about being alive.

As the Aurors jeered at Harry's response, angrily calling for him to show some remorse for what he had done, Harry had now subtly, he hoped, maneuvered himself so that the two groups were no longer standing at a forty-five degree angle to him and instead were on directly opposite sides. It was a dangerous position but it also meant that once spells started flying, as long as he could block the ones headed towards him, the other side would draw fire from their opponent. He needed to draw the Aurors and Death Eaters into a firefight- with any luck both groups could kill each other off and Harry would be free from both of them. There was always hope. Now all he needed to do was to ensure that the Aurors were in the right formation, the triangle that was designed for offensive maneuvers but left the flanks relatively open due to the tight shape.

The Death Eaters were currently jeering at the Aurors who had straightened with self-importance but Harry could see flickers of fear in their expression. They had not counted on having to combat Death Eaters of Bellatrix's caliber, though Harry felt it was a mark of their low intelligence that they had apparently not considered the consequences of potentially challenging Albus Dumbledore in open combat if they had been insistent enough on taking Harry in. Harry still remembered Dumbledore subduing the Minister and Umbridge alongside an Auror and escaping what should have been a locked room in Hogwarts without even tripping over the spring in his step.

Harry needed to make a decision and he was glad to note that his own desires matched well with sheer practicality. He was going to have attack one side first and though Harry had no love for either side, it would work best if he aimed first at the Death Eaters. Attacking the Aurors would only fuel Hermione and Ginny's animosity and distrust of him and he was going to need their backup in a moment. There was also the fact that, of the two sides, the Death Eaters were the larger threat. Bellatrix was positively lethal in combat. He had heard that it had taken a dozen Aurors to subdue and capture her the first time and those were likely far better fighters than the ones assembled here. If he was to take one side by surprise, better it be the one that presented the most danger to him. It was just an added bonus that he very much wanted to curse Bellatrix. Harry hated Fudge and the Aurors but if one could scale hatred, few things could compare to how he felt about the woman that had murdered his godfather- the only adult in his life that had ever truly cared for him.

And it was with that feeling of helpless rage that he felt towards her all those years ago in the Ministry, that Harry raised his wand towards the insane witch. Rage that built up over the years, the long torturous, lonely years and been bred with misery and pain in ways that he could not have possibly understood at the age of 15. It was no simple righteous anger that Harry felt towards the evil witch as he bellowed, " _Incendio_!" A towering inferno was unleashed, surprising Harry with its intensity and size. It had been so long since he had done magic and it was as though his wand was trying to make up for lost time. Heat and power- primal and furious- charged out of him and towards the wide-eyed witch who had now lost any trace of laughter on her face.

There was instant pandemonium, screams rent the air from both sides as the Death Eaters scrambled out of the way and the Aurors charged forward as one massive block, just as Harry had expected them to do. Hermione, to his delight, reacted even quicker than he would have expected, erecting a gigantic shield even as Dumbledore's wand waved in the pattern of a lasso, letting loose a powerful gust of wind that scattered the Death Eaters even more than their panic just as the Aurors pressed forward to attack.

Harry was off like a shot, ducking and attempting to circle around the block of Aurors that was currently guarding the cave entrance, hoping that Dumbledore, at least, was following closely. Harry had a made a deal with the man, his help in retrieving the Horcrux for Dumbledore's unmitigated support in seeing to Harry's freedom- preferably through legal means, but Harry was not going to quibble if it meant a life on the run. He would not be returning to Azkaban, regardless of what his vow to the Order had implied. Harry's exact wording had said that he would not use violence against them, there had never been agreement that he would be walking back with a benign smile in place.

Dumbledore was devoting himself to entirely defensive measures, protecting not only himself but the girls and Harry as well when able. In contrast to the frenzied movement and spellcasting, the wizened Order leader was positively sedate, seemingly at ease in the chaos.

Hermione and Ginny were fighting the Death Eaters back to back but both seemed completely unsure how to respond to the Aurors who were firing off lethal curses as though they were muggle parking tickets. In their minds- foolish as they were- the Order and the Ministry were on the same side and neither one seemed to relish the idea of attacking their allies, even if circumstances demanded it of them.

"Hermione, we have to get to the cave, stop messing around!" Harry finally shouted out, even as he deflected another curse with a small shield, one he had never personally performed himself but had seen demonstrated more times than he could count.

Never before had Harry appreciated Hermione's need for ordered logic. Hermione's mind was too organized _not_ to prioritize her tasks efficiently. The Horcrux was what mattered, they all knew that and while Harry had no doubt that Dumbledore wouldn't hesitate to do what was necessary- the man had proven himself capable of worse than subduing a few troublesome Aurors that were in his path- Hermione had been allowing her consummate concern for what she perceived to be right and wrong stand in her way. Harry caught sight of her posture as it stiffened slightly as she raised another shield, this one reflective, against the Aurors and pressed forward.

Ginny likewise seemed to be firing off spells indiscriminately at this point and Harry could see that over the years Ginny had honed her rather precocious knack for bat boogey hexes into a dangerous spell repertoire. While Hermione laid down mostly defensive cover and curses designed to incapacitate or capture, Ginny's offensive spells were painful or even deadly.

Harry shot out a powerful stunner, cutting through the weak shield of an Auror and taking down the wizard Harry knew from his position would be the point person in the diamond, leading the attacks as they pressed forward. His plan was to pull the formation to defend on the right so that he would then cut in through the left.

Just as it was working and the steady formation of Aurors shifted to defend against their primary target, Harry pivoted and ducked under so that the Death Eaters' curses engaged further on the left side providing him with the hole he had been hoping to create. Dumbledore shifted a large boulder in front of Harry just in time to absorb a green light. In the last few seconds the ranks had completely broken and there was fighting on all sides, spells colliding as pairs dueled one another.

Harry turned and was shocked to see a bright green light leave Ginny's wand. If he had stopped to think for even a second, he wouldn't have done it. Later he would wonder why he had even cared about the fact that Ginny would been forced to bear the weight of someone's death on her conscience. It had been four years since he had last seen her and she had been fighting with the Order for at least the past year, who was to say that this would have been the first person that she would have killed. Let alone the fact that she hypocritical enough to be upset that _he_ was supposedly a murderer and practitioner of the Dark Arts.

But like so many times in his life when caught up in a dangerous situation in the heat of the moment, Harry didn't think at all. He used an impedimenta jinx to cause the Death Eater in the path of the curse to stumble and then used a stunner to knock him out.

Unfortunately it did not stop the path of the curse, which continued past its fallen mark and directly into the path of an Auror. It was Mark Flowers. Harry had no time contemplate his own role in what happened as another green light left a wand, this one headed towards Ginny. This time Harry took a page out of Dumbledore's playbook and summoned a large boulder to absorb the curse.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ginny yelled.

"Trying to save your ass!" Harry screamed back at her. "Flowers wasn't supposed to be standing there but what the hell are you doing!" He caught sight of her startled look of surprise. She stuttered and Harry was forced to block another wayward curse as it headed her way in her moment of distraction.

She seemed to have no answer for him but there was no time to argue. Harry ran for the passage, skidding under a dark purple light and using his wand to slice open the palm of his hand. He shoved his bleeding hand at the outside of the cave and watched in relief as Hermione tumbled through. An Auror ran after her but Dumbledore seemed to scoop the man out of thin air and deposit him several meters away in the way a mother might remove an unruly toddler and place them in a playpen. The Headmaster of Hogwarts and Defeater of Grindlewald strode smoothly into the cave as though fighting against two separate sides in a war was a normal point of entry for him and Harry grunted in frustration and exhaustion. This was the hardest fight he had been a part of in years and it galled him to know that the man beside could have apparently made things much easier. There was only one reason for Dumbledore to have held back as he seemed to have done- he was testing Harry. Wanting to see how he reacted- who he would attack first, what type of spells he would use, and perhaps most importantly after four years in Azkaban, how powerful his little chosen weapon actually was.

As they recovered from their shock and, for some, injuries, the Aurors had given chase. Harry fired curses rapidly at them, pushing them back and ensuring that no one but the people he had arrived with would be capable of entering after them.

Ginny, cheek bleeding from a shot with a shallow cutting curse ran towards him, her small body nimble and quick as she weaved her way through the dueling wizards from both sides that were now engaged in chaotic fighting all around them. As she darted through the entrance, barely out of breath despite her mad dash, Harry had the errant memory that Ginny had once replaced his position on the Quidditch team and wondered if her position had become permanent after his arrest. In spite of her...methods, there was no denying that Ginny Weasley had become a strong and capable fighter. Her spells powerful, her body quick and athletic and her instincts lightning fast when under pressure.

Harry vanished his blood from the entrance just as Dumbledore himself shot a spell at the point of contact with Harry's blood.

"The passage will resume its original protections," Dumbledore told them confidently.

"Get going!" Harry yelled even as he aimed his wand outward. The scattered Death Eaters were reorganizing quickly, and Bellatrix would be on them again in moments. He was no ward expert by any means, but he knew enough to know that he would be able to lay down spellfire even if he was behind the invisible protections of the blood spell. "Bellatrix has his blood, I'll hold them off, just get the Horcrux."

Ginny opened her mouth, perhaps to say that it should be Harry getting the Horcrux, perhaps still not trusting that he would protect them in spite of what he had just done for her, but Dumbledore nodded quickly. "Yes I believe that you have played your part for the moment Harry." The normally twinkling eyes held a strange emotion in them that even after Dumbledore and turned and left with the girls in tow had Harry wondering what it meant. He suspected that Dumbledore did not want to risk Harry any more than necessary at present. Those risks- of course- would come later. There were other Horcruxes that would need to be destroyed if they were going to defeat Voldemort and it seemed likely that others would also have protections that only Harry could get through. Harry considered the words of the prophesy and felt a burden as the words fell on him for the first time in years. Being imprisoned in his cell and dealing with the Aurors, Harry had not thought about the heavy responsibility that had been laid on his scrawny fifteen year old shoulders a mere hour after his godfather's death. When he had first been sentenced, among all of his feelings of betrayal, abandonment, fear and misery there had also been a nearly suffocating sense of panic that Voldemort would win. That he would destroy the world and it would be Harry's fault because he was doing nothing to stop him. But as time had passed and Dumbledore had done nothing to help with his release, nor had he made any attempt to even contact Harry, that feeling of guilt and responsibility had ebbed and been lost among the other negative emotions he had been forced to endure.

And now it seemed as though the job he had once painfully accepted as his destiny was far harder than he had even dreamed, and this knowledge came at a time when he had never been less certain that he even wanted to continue the fight. He wanted Voldemort dead, there was no question of that. Preferably a rather long drawn out and painful death. But was Harry really supposed to sacrifice himself?

If there was one thing his life had taught him, it was to prioritize his problems. He couldn't think about his next move, not when he had pressing concerns at the moment. And so the moment the passage was clear of his companions, Harry aimed his wand at the ground and set off a large blasting hex, gorging a crater into the ground.

Bellatrix swung her wand as though brandishing a sword and a jet of purest black aimed itself at him. Unable to move fast enough Harry was forced to cast the strongest Shield Charm he could manage and was relieved to find that it was deep golden color. The razor edged jet of light struck the dome of the Shield with a gong-like clang and Harry suddenly had a sense of déjà vu from the time he had witnessed Dumbledore and Voldemort duel one another.

He was not worried about the Aurors, without a sample of Voldemort's blood, or his own, they would not be able to get through the seal entrance, but the Death Eaters were a different story. Bellatrix shifted her stance and repeated the spell, her face twisted into an ugly grimace of determination and pure power. It was not mere loyalty and insanity alone that made Bellatrix Lestrange Voldemort's most trusted lieutenant, few wizards possessed more raw power and skill with a wand.

Harry strained against the onslaught of the curses that Bellatrix and her minions threw at him. It had been so long since he had done magic and the joy and exuberance he had felt merely an hour ago was now replaced with fatigue and pain. The strain on his shield as Bellatrix laid more strength into her curse was nearly overwhelming. Harry had no idea what the spell did, he had never seen its equal before, but he could feel the dark magic pouring off it even as its effects remained mercifully a secret for the time being. But the dark essence was creeping in on his already damaged psyche- taunting him to give up. Urging him to leave the Horcruxes to the Order since they had decided to run the war without him anyway. Why was he fighting for them? What reason had they given him to save them when no one, _ever_ , had saved him? Not when he had been a child at the Dursleys, not when the teachers had bloody well known that Dumbledore was leaving the school when the Philosopher's Stone was vulnerable, not when a Basilisk was trying to kill students, not when he had been entered into a deadly Tournament illegally and against his will, not when the Wizarding World as a whole had organized a targeted bullying campaign against a fifteen year old and definitely not when he had gone to Azkaban. He owed them nothing, his mind seemed to whisper to him.

No.

He would not allow himself to give up. He would not surrender. Not here, when he was so close. Not to HER of all people, who had not only killed the one person that had truly loved Harry unconditionally, but had been instrumental in ruining everything else. His choices would be made later but in this moment he would not let this monster win. And with a well of strength Harry had not known that he could possess, he pressed forward. He pushed his magic into the shield, turning it into a reflector- not simply absorbing the assault against him but _returning_ it. With fervor. He could see Bellatrix's eyes widen, her hair, already tangled and in disarray, whipping around her face as she struggled to hold out against him.

Harry needed the Death Eaters away from the entrance, he needed them so far away that he and the others would have time to secure the Horcrux from whatever devious trap that Voldemort had used to protect it. Harry was not naïve enough to think that the paranoid man had only blocked the entrance when protecting a piece of his very soul- the key to his immortality the only thing that Voldemort cared about.

Once they had the Horcrux, _this_ Horcrux, Harry's deal with Dumbledore was complete. He had agreed to help secure the Horcrux and if the situation demanded it, to help destroy it when the time came, but after that Dumbledore had promised him freedom. More than that, he had been promised the truth. The Order would finally know what had truly happened at Privet Drive and Harry...would at long last be vindicated. A few years beforehand it might have been hope at reconciliation that drove him, or perhaps it would have been joy at finally being found innocent. But too much had happened and it was quiet rage that fueled him now. Rage that Draco Fucking Malfoy had taken the place in the Order that should have been his. Rage that any one of them could have believed for a moment that he would trade revenge against the Dursleys against justice for his parents' murder. And Harry learned something that day...Bellatrix had been wrong, righteous indignation was indeed a powerful weapon in its own right.

Harry wasn't sure what curse he used but he remembered using the movement for the banishing charm that he had learned in Fourth Year and felt a stirring of that power that he felt once before, in the graveyard when he had known beyond logic or reason that he needed to force the light back towards Voldemort in spite of the fact that by every right he should have been no match for the powerful Dark Wizard.

There was a gust of wind and suddenly his attackers were gone. Blown back several hundred meters and seemingly disoriented enough that they were unable to reassemble quickly. Harry wasted no time, he pointed his wand once more, this time at the thicket of trees and shouted " _Bombarda_!" toppling the forest from the roots itself, caging in the Death Eaters even if temporarily but leaving the entrance to the cave free and clear. He doubted that Voldemort would have made it possible for them to apparate out and he was not about to trap them inside of the cave indefinitely.

He raced into the cave, hoping that the others had not been idly waiting for him, or that whatever traps remained also needed his personal attention. The sooner they got out of there, the better, in his opinion. And never let it be said that Harry Potter did not get his wishes granted- it was just an incredible misfortune that those wishes were often twisted in horrible ways. There were a few twists and turns before Harry entered into a large cavern. The ceiling was strangely high for a natural cave and inside, a large lake lay smooth and still. Harry looked over and saw that the other three occupants of the cave had used a small boat to cross to a small island in the center where a large basin was held.

And it seemed that his wishes had been granted in usual fashion, because Dumbledore had, in fact, already moved onto breaking through Voldemort's trap and Harry could see, even from the distance opposite bank, that the old wizard had done so by drinking something deadly. Dumbledore was hunched over a stone basin, visibly trembling even from 50 odd meters away. Moans and whimpers echoed around the stillness of the cave and the man's knees were buckling as he clung to the sides of the basin with strength that seemed to be ebbing quickly.

"What the bloody hell is he doing?" Harry shouted across the smooth water that separated him from the other three. The other two girls were anxiously standing over their former Headmaster, coaxing him into drinking another goblet. Their voices were filled with false bravado and Harry could hear the distaste in Hermione's voice, the tears that were threatening to fall as she nodded to her former Headmaster, 'yes, you must drink it'.

"The Horcrux is at the bottom of the basin," Hermione called back, even as Ginny enticed the failing, elderly wizard into drinking yet another cupful.

"So vanish the damn potion!"

"We tried that Harry!" Hermione shouted back indignantly. "Once you get into the cave properly magic doesn't even work, the only way to get rid of the potion is to drink it."

Harry blinked and tried to light a _lumos_ in the cave, wondering if his wand would work where others had failed. It seemed that having the brother to Voldemort's wand only got one so far. The spell worked but it was incredibly weak and even then it was strangely draining on his magic in a way only truly powerful spells were meant to affect a wizard.

Fear shot through him in more ways than one but he decided to concentrate on the fear that he could blame to at the moment. "Glad to see that the noble Order of the Phoenix doesn't have a problem with allowing one person to do everything for you! There are three of you for fucks sake, there's no reason why he needs to drink the whole thing!"

"We offered Harry!" Ginny screamed back this time, her tone full of anger at the slight on her honor. "We didn't want him to take it, he insisted. Dumbledore knows what he's doing."

"I bloody hope he isn't doing what I fucking think he's doing," Harry muttered under his breath.

Dumbledore had bloody well promised to come clear with the truth but Harry did not like the chances of Voldemort leaving anyone who drank his potion alive after the fact. It would be just like Dumbledore to get out of a promise by allowing himself to die. Harry knew the man was not afraid of death, only of failure that his numerous schemes and plans would never see completion.

"It's better this way," Hermione called out, her shaky voice breaking completely. It seemed that she was working hard to convince herself of what she was saying more than him.

"That's awfully convenient," Harry shot back rather vindictively. He had heard the waver in her voice, heard the guilt that accompanied Hermione's ever logical mind as it reasoned against her innate compassion- but as far as Harry was concerned she had been allowing logic to overrule all other emotions for a very long time and it was time for a shock back into reality.

"It's not _convenient_ Harry! I wanted to take the potion myself but it makes more sense for only one of us to compromise ourselves, if only one of us takes it, the rest of us can help get Dumbledore to safety."

Harry wanted to point out that it would have been a lot more _logical_ for either Ginny or Hermione to take it considering that Dumbledore would certainly be a greater asset in a fight or further advanced magic, not to mention the small detail that currently Dumbledore was the only person of consequence that knew that Harry was innocent. Of course it was too much to ask that Dumbledore would have said something to either of the girls in front of him while he, Harry, had been detained by the Death Eaters.

"No!" Dumbledore screamed out, "don't hurt them, kill me! Kill me instead!"

"What's happening?" Harry called out.

"I-I'm not sure...I think he's hallucinating," Hermione called back. Harry was too far away to properly see Dumbledore's face but he recognized the sounds of a person in mental agony. Years in Azkaban had taught him that there was no greater pain than regret...and true remorse. He had seen it and heard it. Not always, not every prisoner in Azkaban lived to regret what they had done but harsh experience had taught him that more of them did than most wizards would have expected. The Dementors had never been used for the purpose of showing a person the error of their ways and hoping that they would change, they had been used as vengeance. Punishment against those that had hurt the innocent and there had been a time when Harry had thought that it was well deserved. Those that broke the law, especially those that hurt others, deserved to suffer for their crimes. But Harry had learned that the soul was a complicated vessel, capable of so much more than people gave it credit for. It was so easy for most people to zero in on a few simple character traits and then be certain that they were a person's entire motivation.

Easy to assume that Ron was driven by jealousy and need to prove himself.

Easy to narrow Hermione down to a driven bookworm that felt the most confident when feeding straightforward facts to people.

Easy to look at Severus Snape and see a bitter man that had never grown out of childhood grudges.

But in truth, people were so much more complicated and Harry knew better than anyone that a person could house anger and resentment right alongside compassion. That they could know what the right thing to do was and still feel compelled to act differently. He could see that pain on Dumbledore's lined face now and wondered what ancient pain the man held. Harry had witnessed and experienced more pain in his twenty years than most people would have ever dreamed of, but Dumbledore had outlived him by five lifetimes and it had been by no means a quiet one.

Harry knew that he should feel awful for the pain the man was clearly in, and he did feel some compassion for him. However, his primary thought was that it would be just his luck for Voldemort to actually leave Dumbledore alive only to ensure that he had driven the man insane and incapable of telling anyone anything. Harry would be forced to know that the key to his freedom was incased in the Closed Ward of St. Mungo's, no doubt eating Sherbet Lemons until his heart was content.

"We got it!" Hermione yelled even as Dumbledore seemed to shudder and still.

"Professor, Professor..." Ginny shook the man in front of her, her desperation making her sound gentler and more human than Harry had seen her since Fifth Year.

"Water..." Harry could barely hear the words even the echoing chamber of the cave.

The girls tried to conjure water but the magic wouldn't come for them. Voldemort had designed his trap well and there was no choice but to turn to the lake for the life-giving water. Ginny and Hermione glanced at one another frantically as though waiting for the other to stop them from taking the needed water. Harry didn't understand until, for the first time, Harry looked down at the water and could see why the girls had not gone directly to the lake for water.

Inferi. Hundreds of them.

Harry shouted for them to stop, to get Dumbledore to safety first, and then give him water, but Hermione had been Sorted into Gryffindor over Ravenclaw despite all outward appearances. In times when it mattered, her need to do right always outweighed her need to do what made sense. She dipped the goblet into the lake, hurrying back to give the water to the Headmaster- but it was too late. As soon as the smooth surface had been disturbed, dozens upon dozens of decaying bodies started to climb from the lake. Harry raised his wand taking a deep breath to summon as much strength as possible.

" _Incendio!_ "

There was no wall of flames, no protective blaze that rose out in front of him. Instead there was a pitiful flicker of light. Harry looked up to see the girls quickly trying to drag Dumbledore back to the boat but the bodies were already on top of them. Forced into muggle fighting Harry and the others were quickly being overwhelmed.

Which is why it was very lucky indeed that Harry had spent the last four years of his life thinking exclusively about means of escape from terrible places, which enabled to think of something that he didn't think anyone else would have dreamed of.

"Kreacher!" The name was more grunted than shouted as he had hoped as he punched a corpse in the face as hard as he could.

Hermione screamed in pain and Ginny cried out in a mix of anger and desperation. He couldn't see what was happening and Harry felt a sense of panic grab at his heart in a way he had not felt in years. He knew that the girls were both in front of Dumbledore, trying desperately to defend not only themselves but their mentor and leader.

There was a pop, "Master... _called_ Kreacher," the elf said in distain before his eyes widened in sheer disbelief and terror about what he was seeing.

"Get the others out of here!" Harry shouted in anger and distraction as he clawed his way back to a jagged rock, trying to anchor himself as the horde of bodies attempted to drag him back to their watery grave.

Kreacher popped out of existence and reappeared on the other side just as an Inferi attacked Harry's face, smothering his mouth and another strangling his throat. He couldn't see anymore. He had meant to call Kreacher back. He still needed to give the last order. He couldn't breath and that panic in his chest grew painful and urgent. He was going to die. He was going to die and it wouldn't matter that Dumbledore had promised to help him and Snape was _actually_ helping him. He would die a traitor and murderer and mourned by no one. He could feel himself being shifted, lifted and moved as the army of the dead recruited their newest member the water depths below. Harry's last thought was that he hoped even if body was trapped in the cave for all time, he wished desperately that his soul would be reunited with those that actually cared for him.

 **A/N: Hope everyone had a great New Year. Very sorry for the long delay between chapters but I promise the next one will be much quicker. Fight scenes are not a strong point for me. Thank you again for everyone that has reviewed and encouraged me. For the record, the protections around the cave vary slightly from canon- the fact that Harry's blood is needed to initially enter is obviously a necessary plot change (or else my entire story makes absolutely no sense) and I also changed the fact that magic could not be used once inside the cave for really no other reason than dramatic tension.**

 **As always a huge thank you to the best beta of all betas: mylittlehazmat**


	17. A Changing Perspective

**Chapter 17: A Changing Perspective**

Hermione felt the strange suffocation of forced apparition and suddenly, she was in a brightly lit, chaotic corridor with Healers and Mediwitches and wizards running around among the casualties from Voldemort's latest attack. She gasped for air, her lungs burning from the unexpectedness of the sensation, her limbs trembling slightly from the delayed release of adrenaline that had been feeding her steadily over the past hour.

"What..." Ginny muttered incoherently. She had crumbled upon landing, her center of gravity off as she had still been fighting off the Inferi before she had been apparated away.

"Kreacher?" Hermione asked, startled to see the elderly, normally hostile elf as their impromptu savior.

The Elf nodded grimly at her, but his usual nasty attitude had been tempered by what seemed to be residual shock at the scene he had just left. His usual greyish skin looked even more sickly than normal and his eyes were wide with terror.

"How..." Ginny whispered, still out of breath and shaking slightly from the encounter. Dumbledore was unconscious beside them, the suffocation of apparition no doubt too much after the effects of the potion he had ingested. "Kreacher got us out of there, but...I don't understand, how he could have known..." But of course there was really only one answer. Hermione had been forced to admit some years earlier the futility of her mission to free House-elves from their servitude, but she had learned quite a bit about them before she had given up her cause, and the most important thing about a House-elf was that the orders of their master were absolute. That would mean...she looked around fanatically, but the last person of their group wasn't with them.

"Kreacher...Kreacher!" she had to repeat. The elf was rocking slightly, muttering 'good-master-Regulus-my-poor-master-poor-master-gone-gone-' but shut up abruptly when he heard his name being called.

"Did Harry tell you to bring us here?"

Ginny looked up in shock, shaking her head at Hermione in disbelief.

"Master ordered Kreacher to save his friends, Kreacher is forced to obey Master when he commands Kreacher, even if Master lied and said he would not be ordering Kreacher. 'Oh no' he says, 'no orders for Kreacher' from nasty fake Master who is not a Black. Master is a nasty, filthy Half-Blood unlike Kreacher's former Mistress, but still Kreacher must obey."

"Where's Harry?" Hermione asked urgently as she looked around. They had been overrun, it was bound to be too late but she couldn't stand the idea of Harry dying alone in that cave after he had saved them. _He had saved them..._

"Master not be saying anything about bringing _him_ here, he only be ordering Kreacher to be saving his blood traitor friends."

"You have to go back Kreacher! Harry needs you, he was being overwhelmed by them, he couldn't say anything!" Hermione said frantically. "You have to save him, please!" It was too awful, too much had been left unsaid between the two of them- three of them really, there had once been three of them and now they, all of them, were alone and she had spent the last few days doing nothing to fix that- stray tears trickled down her dirt-stained cheeks as she pleaded with the elf.

"The Mudblood is speaking to Kreacher! Kreacher is forced to listen to dirty Half Blood Master but he won't be listening to filthy disgusting mudblood. No, no, no! Kreacher won't, Kreacher WON'T!"

"Kreacher!" Ginny snapped, "did Harry say that you _couldn't_ rescue him?"

"No..."

"Then I suggest you get back there quick because if Harry dies, he has it in his will that Hermione inherits you, you know what that means? That 'filthy mudblood' is going to be your new master."

With a look as though he had just been given a fate worse than certain death, Kreacher disapparated with a sharp crack.

Hermione let out a gasp of relief that warred with terrible certainty that they had waited too long. Harry couldn't possibly survive. For the moment though she settled for turning a sharp eye on Ginny, who shrugged back at her unapologetically, "moot point, Harry didn't leave anything to anyone. But Kreacher didn't know that, and he doesn't need to know that you would rather give up magic altogether than own a House-elf- we couldn't afford to sit around and twiddle our thumbs while Harry got dragged into the lake."

Hermione wanted to needle the girl about her sudden concern for someone that she had made abundantly clear she felt deserved every ounce of misery he had received, but their attention needed to be turned to the fallen Headmaster. Dumbledore's breath was rasping, his chest rising and falling too quickly for it to be healthy and too shallow for proper air to fill his lungs.

"Professor, we're at St. Mungo's, everything is going to be alright," Hermione told the elderly man, desperately hoping that she was not laying out useless platitudes. She had never seen the Headmaster look so old, so utterly weak and devoid of the magnetic personality that had made him the unquestioned leader of the Order in both wars.

"We need help over here!" Ginny was shouting, but for the moment, no one seemed to be interested in diverting attention from their current task. She had been so distracted that it finally occurred to Hermione that she had never seen the Wizarding hospital so crowded and disorganized. Dozens of injured people lined the halls, waiting for the understaffed and clearly overwhelmed medical personnel to see them, as even as more patients seemed to arrive by the minute. While at the cave, she had not been able to even think about how many people she cared about had gone right into the attack, and her worry for them came to the forefront of her mind.

Ron had been there, and Neville, even Draco had been there. It didn't occur to her in the moment that Thurston only entered her mind after her former school enemy. She was close to panic when suddenly the objects of her concern came towards her.

"Hermione!" Ron called, rushing down the hall towards her, his eyes wide with worry at seeing her, seemingly unharmed himself. "You alright?" He was being trailed by Neville, Draco and Bill. Bill's arm was bleeding and Draco's usually immaculate appearance was rumpled and disheveled, but luckily major injuries seemed to have been avoided.

"Dumbledore's been hurt, he needs a Healer quickly. He drank this potion...I'm not sure what's wrong, I mean obviously the fact that he's unconscious and can hardly breathe are what's wrong, but what I mean to say..." She stopped to take a breath, she was babbling, something she had not done in years. She suddenly had a stray memory of being eleven years old with Ron and Harry, watching them struggle against the Devil's Snare and feeling hysterical that she didn't have any matches. 'Are you a witch or not?' Ron had asked her and for months after she had chided herself for own foolishness, vowing to become better in a crisis. The way Harry always had been...the way he still was, she reminded herself forcefully.

"Severus!" Bill was shouting and Severus Snape was striding quickly forward, his self-assured steps faster than many were capable of moving when they assumed a less graceful jog. His sharp eyes were already taking in the state of the Headmaster. "What did he ingest?" He asked even as he dropped to his knees and peeled back his eyelids.

"We don't know, nothing I've ever seen before," Hermione admitted, "it was a bright, almost neon green. It had one of the highest viscosities that I've ever seen, similar to the Draught of Living Death but this was...vibrant, rather than murky in coloration. There were 13 full goblets worth of potion, I counted them specifically, and his condition seemed to deteriorate at a very steady pace from when he consumed the first goblet, there was no sudden spike of symptoms after the ingestion of the entire potion. It attacked mentally, I believe by bringing up old memories and regrets, but it was hard to follow. At the end...he was begging us to kill him..."

Ron and Neville looked up at her in shock while Draco's expression was hard to read. He was pale and grim and Ginny came to stand closer to him than two people that were still ostensibly denying that they were in a relationship had reason to stand. Snape only nodded before using his wand to levitate Dumbledore. "As a Potions Master, I have privileges in the Potions unit. I will bring Albus there and see what I can do. Where's Potter?" he asked.

"Coming," Ginny answered, voice tight. Snape pursed his lips slightly, his eyes narrowing in characteristic anger and dislike. The feeling between them all was largely mutual. Snape was no longer their professor and Hermione was no longer bound to his authority. He had never been liked among the Gryffindors and simply being on the same side of the war was not enough for any of them to forget the treatment they had received at his hand. As much as Hermione knew the man had given a lot to their cause before his position had been compromised by Harry, she could not escape the uncharitable thought that he hadn't done much for their cause lately and while another (more easily liked person) might have had this problem overlooked, it was hard to afford the man the same courtesy. "I suppose the war effort can only hope you're right." And with those rather enigmatic words, Snape swept out of the room, curt as always.

"Coming?" Neville asked, turning back towards them, "What the hell is that supposed to mean? You let him go off alone?"

"Oh yes, Neville, Harry asked if it was alright with us if he go off and take his wand for a walk and we said 'sure no problem'," Hermione answered with great exasperation. "We were a bit...preoccupied."

But further explanations weren't required when the four them caught sight of Harry, looking the very picture of a drowned rat as he limped painfully down the hallway, using the wall for support and having to stop often as he ran into several other people with injuries. It was obvious right away that Harry had in fact been pulled into the lake; how close he had come to actually drowning was anyone's guess but as he stopped his forward movement to let out several hacking coughs, it seemed to have been a very near miss. It was crowded and noisy and they had to wait until they were quite close before they were able to hear what Harry and his elf were saying to one another.

"Kreacher be saving Master even though Master was not being ordering him to do so. Kreacher is being _very_ good elf for ungrateful, lying Master."

"I told you already Kreacher," Harry rasped, his already rough voice barely audible from his strained throat. Hermione could see livid bruises on his neck, rapidly darkening. " _Thank_ _you_. I appreciate your help and I'm sorry. I know that I told you that I wouldn't be giving you orders, but it was an emergency situation. To make it up to you, you can pick one of the Black Family Heirlooms for yourself to keep- assuming they all haven't been stolen by the Order already," Harry added, frowning to himself.

Somehow the fact that Harry was certain that the Order had been stealing from him and had simply announced it in casual conversation had hurt more than if he had hurled an accusation at them in anger.

"Harry!" Ron called out, tone of surprise clear in his voice, "you look like hell mate."

Harry's eyebrows shot up at the familiar address and Ron's neck heated as though he had only realized what he had said after the fact. "Feels like I was just there," Harry grunted, leaning his full weight against the wall as he came to stand in front of them, wincing as he shifted weight off of his damaged left leg. Hermione pointed her wand at him and his robes dried instantly. "Cheers," Harry thanked her tiredly before coughing once more.

"Kreacher is being nice enough to leave Master away from filthy Blood Traitors and but lying Master be going looking for his friends right away," Kreacher muttered darkly.

"Friends is a bit of a stretch for everyone involved Kreacher," Harry sighed. Hermione took notice that while Harry seemingly took offense to Kreacher calling them friends he felt no such concern about hearing them referred to as 'Blood Traitors'; from her narrowed eyes, it was something Ginny had caught as well.

"Where's Dumbledore?" Harry rasped out.

"Snape took him down to level 3, Potion Accidents and Mishaps...he didn't look good," Hermione explained.

Harry nodded, expression grim and almost, strangely, resigned by that information.

"How did you know to call Kreacher?" Ginny asked him abruptly, she was studying Harry's beat up appearance closely, seeming to look for something; whether she found it or not was hard to say.

Harry let out a shaky breath, closing his eyes tiredly for a moment and finally catching his breath completely before answering, "You spend long enough in Azkaban and you start wondering about all types of wards and magic that keep wizards inside. It's impossible to use accidental magic inside Azkaban, do you realize how hard it is to stop accidental magic entirely? Even though it's rare for adults, given the right circumstances, the right...desperation, it'll still happen. Or wandless magic at least- whatever you want to call it. Fact remains, there's very few ways to actually stop magic from occurring and all of them are extremely difficult. Even using a wand is more difficult in there than it should be- though Unforgivables, from what I understand, are actually easier. I expect it's the atmosphere of the place, the years of hate and misery and...pain have seeped into the place enough that most find it easier to get into the right mindset." Harry gave an unconscious shudder as he spoke of the prison that he had been calling home for the past four years.

"But anyway... I asked Felix one time why Purebloods didn't just call their House-elves to apparate them out of Azkaban since, well, from what I'd seen, it seems like House-elves can get in and out of just about anywhere. He told me that apparently in the early years of the prison, that actually happened, so special protective spells were invented specially to keep House-elves out but, supposedly, they were extremely complicated to perform. Add that to the fact that most people never even think about using House-elves for doing anything other than cleaning and most never think to include them. And well...if you remember, I always think best when I'm about to die; I took a chance."

"Hang on, is anyone up to explaining what the hell is going on? Potter looked like he drowned, Albus Bloody Dumbledore is bloody well dying by some poison no one can identify, and no one has even mentioned if you got the Horcrux or not!" Draco complained loudly.

"You know, I seem to remember being told once that I was too young and stupid to be a member of the esteemed Order of the Phoenix, but I don't think I ever went off screaming about private information in the middle of crowded corridors." Harry commented idly. "Then again...maybe if I had, a few other people- namely a few professors in particular- could have been of some actual use in school, so I guess I shouldn't really criticize the technique," he added with a shrug, and Hermione had that infuriating feeling of not knowing how to respond. It was hard, being reminded of all the times that Harry had saved them. She had gotten so good over the years of simply _not thinking about him._ Or when she had thought about him, she had forced herself to think about the fact that he had betrayed them and what they stood for. He wasn't the boy she had thought that he was, not the friend that she had loved so dearly. Except...over the past few days, she had learned that he still was that person. He was still the brave, reckless, infuriatingly sarcastic and yet terribly stubborn boy- now man- that she had once considered to be her best friend.

Instead of confronting these feelings, she pushed them aside, and turned to Draco, quickly recapping everything that had happened. The fact that both the Ministry and the Death Eaters had gone after them, how they had gotten into the cave while Harry had ensured that the entrance was covered and how she and Ginny had agreed to make sure that Dumbledore had drunk the entire potion, no matter what the consequences. Finally, she ended with the explanation of how the Inferi had attacked and how Harry had saved them all by calling Kreacher.

"You ordered Kreacher to get them out first?" Ron asked, his blue eyes narrowed in thought the way she remembered when she would watch him playing her chess. His face was open with curiosity and...was that hope that Hermione saw? Or was that her own feelings she was projecting?

"In fairness, I was planning on adding onto that order, but I got cut off before I could," Harry answered with a shrug and a grimace as he shifted his leg uncomfortably once more.

"But how did you know to call _Kreacher_ though," Bill pressed, his eyebrows furrowed, "you never said anything about knowing that you had inherited Grimmauld Place."

"Oh, I suppose my apologies then," Harry said as he rolled his eyes, "what is the proper etiquette that one is supposed to follow when you're aware that people are stealing and using what's rightfully yours but you're in no position to be able to stop them? Should I have said something sooner? The Dursleys were never great at instilling proper manners."

The former-Gryffindors all flushed in unison, none of them sure what to say for themselves while Draco looked rather smug that they had gotten to use Harry's inheritance the whole time he had been in prison. In truth, Hermione had never given much thought in the past to the fact that the Order had been using the house illegally as their Headquarters.

Harry shook his head and let out a sigh before explaining. "I was Sirius' only close family, I figured out a long time ago that given the chance, he would have left his estate to me; when you all left to help stop Voldemort's last attack, I tested the theory. Lucky thing that at least one of Sirius' plans worked out the way he wanted it, his life certainly didn't end up that way."

"And whose fault is that?" Ginny asked, but for once there was more bravado in her voice than anger. It was clear that she was unsure what to make of everything that had happened, and was struggling to right her view of the world. Hermione knew that Ginny hated acknowledging shades of grey. For her, the world had to be seen in black and white. Good people and Death Eaters. Hermione wasn't sure if the roots of it came from being possessed by Tom Riddle for a good portion of her First Year or if it was just an inborn trait of her personality, but she did know that to Ginny, there was no such thing as 'exceptional circumstances' or 'lesser of two evils'.

Harry turned to her levelly as he said, "Bellatrix Lestrange's. She was the one that cast him through the veil. And mine," he admitted quietly. "I wasn't able to protect him the way I wanted, I went after him thinking he was in danger and wound up leading him to his death. It was a sad way to die and he deserved better." The sincerity was unmistakable.

They were quiet for a moment, Ginny shifting uncomfortably, their recent experiences clashing sharply with how she had been treating him.

After another moment Neville did the obvious thing and conjured a chair for Harry to sit down on. "Thanks," came the quiet response as Harry gratefully collapsed onto the chair. Hermione felt herself flush at the realization that she should have thought of doing that earlier. After taking a second to let out a shaky breath as though to steady himself, Harry used both hands to drag his injured left leg out in front him, straightening it out as far as possible. Hermione could see a large gash made from human teeth and what she thought were fingernails that had pulled at the open cut. The leg was at a slight angle and she assumed that at one point in the struggle it must have snapped. Harry pulled his wand out of his pocket and both Neville and Bill tensed at the sight, Draco going so far as to draw his wand himself in anticipation.

Harry stilled the moment as he felt the shift in their posture, not even looking up to see the body language, but evidently feeling the change that occurred around him. It spoke of a skill that had been perfected only after long practice. Harry pointed his wand downwards and spoke softly, "Just wanted to heal my leg, I'm not doing anything to anyone."

Neville nodded but Draco scowled as though wanting to argue, but unable to find proper reason to.

Harry looked his leg over carefully, his face a mask of concentration as he waved the wand over his cuts and lacerations, healing them as he went, before using a more complicated spell along with a harsh intake of breath as a bone seemed to right itself beneath the skin. Harry was a bit a pale from the experience, but otherwise seemed to have fixed himself up quite well.

"Where did you learn to do that?" Ron asked in surprise and Hermione had to admit that she was impressed as well. Healing magic was a sadly overlooked topic even in their NEWT level classes and Harry hadn't even progressed passed Ordinary level.

Harry let out two more shuddering breaths before his shoulders relaxed slightly, but it was clear that even if he had managed to repair the damage to his leg, it had done nothing to relieve the overall pain he was feeling. "I've spent the last 3 and half years being the Ministry's punching bag; two years ago it dawned on the incredibly wise and benevolent Minister Tyson that killing off his test dummies wasn't the best practice. I've been in the Infirmary roughly once a week since then, I've seen the spells enough times to do them in my sleep." Bill blinked rapidly a few times before shaking his head and walking away. Harry glanced at his retreating form, looking more nervous about the action than particularly offended by it.

Harry squared his shoulders and adopted a look Hermione had once known well. It was Harry's 'scheming' look. Harry might have been best known for his way of barreling into any dangerous situation but few people paid attention to the fact that Harry took great pains in order to get himself into those perilous life or death situations. Hours in the library researching the Philosopher's Stone. Months spent agonizing over the Chamber of Secrets. Harry would never be the type to be overly enthusiastic about book learning just for the sake of learning, but there was no denying that Harry craved knowing what was going on around him. Real life scenarios. Even when the rest of the school had been content to leave all the suspicious behavior around the school well enough alone, Harry had always thirsted to know every detail.

She had later learned that many abused children liked to know what was going on around them as a means of evaluating risk to themselves. And that Harry's need to involve himself was a sign that he had distrusted the adults in his life to keep him safe, so he felt that he had to do so on his own. Another thing she hadn't known as a child following after Harry, with naive ideas of right and wrong, carried away with the idea that as children they were invincible.

And so it was no doubt with this long established habit in mind that Harry shifted his attention away from his own injuries and focused on the larger picture. "What happened at the Ministry?" Harry asked. "How did he lay out the attack, what was Voldemort's goal?"

"I think his goal was pretty obvious," Ginny answered, rolling of her eyes.

Harry shook his head in annoyance but didn't bother to respond, instead he looked expectantly at the others, "Well?"

"What do you mean? There was no _goal_ , Harry. This is what he does. He attacks innocent people and makes sure that they're terrified of him," Neville answered in exasperation.

Harry stared at them for a minute before closing his eyes and letting out a low chuckle. "You know...I always thought I was just a bit of an idiot when I was a kid, but looking back...I've been too hard on myself; you lot are really useless, aren't you?"

Angry protestations were cut off as Harry continued, heedless of their complaints, "Voldemort _always_ has a plan, even if that plan is to lay low for a long time and allow the Ministry to develop a strategy just so that he can turn around and use it against them. He's been more active in the last week than he's been in the last four years- why do you think that is? Why do you think he risked an attack on the Ministry, in _broad_ _fucking_ _daylight_ , when I already told you he's been planning a breakout of Azkaban for months? Haven't any of you wondered why he didn't wait so that he could not only increase his fighting force with the escaped prisoners, but he would have an army that was better trained than ever before? Voldemort _wants_ something. No sorry, scratch that, I would say that he needs something and it was important enough that he jumped over his months long plan for a massive breakout to get it."

Hermione felt herself flush with embarrassment, she had always thought of herself as an insightful person but over and over again since Harry had arrived, it seemed that she had missed the fundamental things about the world around her. Her misconceptions about her Ministry, her naïveté when it came to trusting the Minister, and now her underestimation of what Voldemort was truly planning.

"And why should we trust you?" Draco asked just as Bill came back with Tonks and two vials in his hands. "Here," he said roughly as he passed them to Harry, avoiding eye contact with him. Harry glanced at the vials that he had taken out of reflex in surprise. He looked back up at Bill again before looking again at the vials as though he was temporarily stunned by their appearance.

He took the lilac colored vial first and Hermione recognized it as Bone Strengthener, a very mild form of Skele-Grow that was used on limbs that had been able to be fixed with spells, yet still needed the help of a potion to ensure that it healed properly. Harry drank the rather vile tasting potion without so much as wince even as Draco continued talking.

"Seems likely that Potter here wants to distract us from the important things and have us concentrated on make-believe plots rather than focused on stopping the bastard in the first place."

"Right in one Malfoy, well done," Harry responded raising the remaining vial as though it were a toast. "It always is such a waste of time figuring out what your enemy is doing, rather than just blunder around blindly and hope that you show up when he attacks next. Are you fighting a war or worried about damage control?"

Draco's cheeks turned pink and his lips thinned in anger. "I still think that we should be considering the source of these sudden questions."

"Doesn't mean that it's not a good point, we should be thinking about the Death Eater's long term plans," Ron pointed out.

"Doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider the possibility that we're being led to a line of reasoning that is going to do more harm than good," Tonks pointed out quietly.

"What is this?" Harry interrupted, turning to Bill holding up the second vial, this one a powder-blue color that most adult wizards would recognize on sight.

"What?" Bill asked in confusion at the non-sequitur. "Oh the potion? Pain reliever," he answered with a shrug.

"Thought you were a bloody expert on healing now from what you were saying earlier," Malfoy muttered next to Ginny, whose eyes narrowed at Harry as he looked at the common pain reliever in apparent confusion. It wasn't a particularly strong dose, though the lightness of the color indicated it was a bit more than the average witch or wizard might carry in their medicine cabinet at home; however, it was such a commonly used potion that almost any muggleborn student would have recognized it by Christmas of their First Year.

As soon as he had learned the identity of the potion, Harry had downed it quickly, as though concerned it might be taken away, before answering, "Pain relievers aren't allowed in Azkaban."

Hermione felt a swell of rage inside of her. She had often felt over the years that the Wizarding World was a barbaric place filled with outdated traditions and casual disregard for basic safety concerns. While she had learned that House-elves were _almost_ universally happy to serve wizards, she had also learned that there were absolutely no laws in place to hold wizards accountable for mistreating them. Centaurs were classified as 'Beasts' simply because of their body structure even though they were strong, independent beings that were far better at Divination than almost any wizard could boast. She had learned to pick her battles, that not all things could, or perhaps even should, be changed all at once, but the idea of her own government condoning torture of their own people was more than she could stand.

She had been thrilled that the Dementors had been removed from the prison. No matter what a person's a crime, the idea that anyone would force another human being to exist alongside the awful creatures was sickening to her. She had been comforted by the idea that very few of them had remained, but to now learn that the government that she had supported and fought for had replaced it with something even worse was disgusting. The idea that she had enthusiastically taken a job to work in the Ministry and that she had been _proud_ to support their new campaigns, which were actually torturing people who couldn't defend themselves, filled her with disgust and anger.

"Back to the main point," Bill cut in, "what were you just talking about? What can't we trust Harry about?"

"Harry was asking what Voldemort's goal was when it came to the attack on the Ministry and...well, we don't really have an answer to that," Hermione answered

Tonks looked thoughtful, "I just came from a meeting with the other Aurors, no real information has been gathered at this time, but we do know that the source of the attack came from within the Ministry."

Ron and Harry both swore under their breath and Hermione inwardly echoed the sentiment.

"Is that important?" Neville asked.

"If the attack came from within the Ministry it means that either Voldemort has a lot of more followers than we knew about, or he has a lot more people under the Imperius than we were prepared to deal with," Harry explained, shaking his head.

"We?" Bill questioned, "are you calling us a 'we' now?"

"Harry saved our lives," Hermione said quietly.

"Harry also took an innocent woman's life and tortured muggles but I guess, bygones are bygone, isn't that right?" Draco reminded them all.

"You would know all about that," Ron muttered.

"I never killed anyone Weasley."

"Neither did I," Harry answered fiercely.

And for the first time in a very, very long time, Hermione believed him. Harry's insistence on his innocence had never faltered, he had been remarkably consistent in everything that he had said, and when it came down to it, it was impossible to deny that he was _genuinely_ helping them. She could see the hopeful, half-scared expression in Ron's eyes, the thoughtful look in Neville's and the skeptical but still considering glint in Bill's and knew that the others were also beginning to consider what a few days ago would have been known as the impossible.

"Though I suppose the same can't be said about Ginny," Harry continued, his own expression more thoughtful than condemning. "Care to explain when you lot started throwing the Killing Curse in casual combat."

"Casual combat...?" Neville blinked, questioning the term, "is that thing?"

"More to the point, Ginny what the _hell_ were you thinking?" Bill asked, clearly shocked by what he was hearing.

"You weren't there Bill! We were utterly surrounded by the worst lot of Death Eaters imaginable. All three Lestranges were there along with Dolohov, and that's not even counting the fact that we were surrounded by Aurors on the other side of us who thought we were the enemy! At least I was aiming for the Death Eaters, Harry _saved them_ and an Auror died. I- I never wanted that to happen," Ginny's voice broke and Hermione could see that she had been trying to push it far out of her mind, though she clearly hadn't succeeded.

"Saving Death Eaters now? Can't claim it should be surprising," Draco pressed, as he placed a comforting arm around Ginny's shoulder, his hand running the length of her arm in a soothing, clearly intimate gesture that had Bill narrowing his eyes at the pair further.

"I wasn't trying to save the Death Eater, I was trying to save you!" Harry argued.

"Save me?" Ginny asked. "How do you imagine that you were saving me?"

"He was trying to stop you from committing murder," Ron answered, his voice tight with emotion. "Gin...you know what the Avada Kedevra does to the caster...you don't come back from that. Have you...is that what you've been using in battle?"

"Ginny," Neville interrupted, his voice almost gentle with the exception of the harsh disappointment bordering on anger in his eyes, "why do you think we're even fighting this war? We're...we're not like that; killing people, using the Dark Arts because they're easier...it's letting them win!"

"Not to mention highly illegal," Tonks put in with a tone of heavy disapproval.

"Not in a combat situation," Ginny argued, "the Ministry issued an edict saying that 'extreme and lethal force is permitted against all supporters of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named when actively engaged in attack'."

"That provision was written for Aurors!"

"Technically not true," Harry muttered shaking his head in apparent disgust but it was unclear if he was disgusted with the Ministry or Ginny, probably both. "Any citizen working alongside the best interest of the Ministry is granted extra-judiciary rights by the authority of the Minister, to use any force the situation warrants as long as they feel that their own life in in danger- though that doesn't come without a few strings."

Hermione nodded along with Harry's explanation; she, of course, had read the new statutes. She had not been a supporter of the legislation, fearing that it would be too easy for people to abuse such power, as there were few legal consequences for anyone who claimed that they were working 'with the best intentions of the Ministry in mind'. However, the need for a mobilized militia-like unit that would 'act to safeguard the interests of the larger Wizarding community' was deemed too important to forsake in a time of war just because of a few 'delicate sensibilities,' as arguments like her own had come to been known as.

When the news of the laws had broken, Hermione had expected there to be a tidal wave of negative backlash. _Wizards allowed to commute Death sentences without a trial or proper authority?_ It had seemed ridiculous to her that people would be allowed to kill one another just because they 'felt' threatened. But the fear people had of the Death Eaters, and perhaps even of each other, was too great to be underestimated and the Minister's policies had been cheered. They had been so widely supported that even Hermione, no longer as confident as she had been as a young girl, when everything had seemed so clear to her, had second guessed her own position. Surely so many people all couldn't be wrong? Hermione often wondered if she hadn't been smarter as a young, over eager know-it-all that had developed little tact and zero filter.

However, what was lesser known about the War Time Measures and Continued Peace Laws, as they were often categorized, is that any person found using 'extreme and lethal force' in service of the Ministry could be automatically drafted into indefinite service on their behalf, and subject to the oaths and loyalty contracts that the DMLE and Auror offices were known to agree to. Hermione now wondered to what purpose the Ministry wanted to extract such oaths.

Ginny's face was an interesting cross-section of both guilt and defiance. "No Ron, I've never cast that curse before but I didn't have a choice."

"We always have choices, Ginny," Hermione and Ron spoke at the same time and Hermione thought Harry might have actually smiled though it happened too fast for her to tell properly.

"Fine then, I made a choice to defend myself and get rid of a Death Eater for good! If what Harry says actually is right then that means that the Death Eaters won't be staying in Azkaban for long. I know everyone likes to pretend that we can fight this war with stunners and disarming charms but don't any of you think the time has passed for that! We're at bloody war, if you haven't forgotten, and I'm not going to feel bad for acting like it. If you want to question loyalties and morality, can you all discuss the small fact that I might have tried to kill a Death Eater but Harry saved one and got an Auror killed instead!"

"I didn't mean for the curse to hit the Auror! I might not have liked Flowers but I never meant for him to die, much less to contribute to it."

"I saw what happened Ginny, everything happened so fast and the Auror...Flowers, he moved at the last minute. Harry didn't mean for him to die."

"That was his name?" Ginny asked quietly.

Harry nodded, "Mark Flowers, older Auror. Not a very good one either, truth be told. His partner, as well as his lover, is Denise Mayweather and she...is gonna be pissed," Harry said with a degree of trepidation.

"You pushed a _Death Eater_ out of the way and an _Auror_ died instead?" Bill clarified.

"Wasn't the plan exactly, but then, when have I ever done anything the easy way," Harry admitted. "I was trying to save one man, not get another one killed."

"You mean save one Death Eater."

"Still a man, Ginny. Still the death of a person you would be responsible for. I'm not saying that you don't have a point, some Death Eaters deserve to die- but if we start doing that indiscriminately, it doesn't make us any better than Voldemort. If you want to fight against him, you have to fight against everything that he stands for as well. Killing people because they stand against you, killing people out of fear- that's not what I want to fight for and if you do, I guess you've been right about us being enemies." Ginny's face had turned pale and her hands trembled slightly. Ron's eyes were wide and he was looking at Harry as though he had never seen him before.

No one had anything to say in response to Harry's impassioned defense of measured responses to Death Eaters. After a moment though the practicalities of their situation became more important than moral ambiguity.

"Well, that's certainly going to make things more difficult with the Ministry," Neville mentioned with a frown of consternation at this latest complication. "If they were trying to send you back early before, they're going to be out for blood now."

"I don't see how we have a problem." Draco threw in rather quickly in Hermione's estimation. "We have the Horcrux which makes our deal complete. Potter should be on his way back to Azkaban right about now by my calculations."

"No one is doing anything until Dumbledore wakes up," Tonks interjected swiftly. The younger Auror had been uncharacteristically quiet the past couple of days and Hermione suspected that Tonks wasn't sure how to react around Harry ever since he had caught Teddy from his fall. The young mother was obviously grateful to Harry, but her duties as an Auror made her position clear.

"You think the Aurors are just going to let this go?" Draco challenged. "He killed one of their own. Keeping him around any longer is a liability for all of us. Minister Tyson agreed to furlough him to us against his better judgement and now we've proven that he was right along."

"That's not fair to say!" Hermione argued. "We needed Harry to get the Horcrux and he helped us. He fought the Death Eaters and he saved our lives in that cave. Don't you all think that we should start trusting Harry? At what point are we going to stop ignoring what's right in front of us!"

" _Did_ he fight the Death Eaters?" Draco questioned giving Ginny's arm a not-quite-subtle squeeze. "Seems to me that someone like Potter wouldn't use half measures in a real war. We all know that he's had no trouble in the past using Unforgivable Curses, but suddenly he's going to start preaching to us that we have to better than the enemy? Easy for him to say, he's not the one that the Death Eaters would be targeting."

"Sounds like he was at just as much risk, if not more, in that fight as the others," Neville pointed out, always one to consider all sides of argument but he was frowning and it seemed that he was more inclined to be playing devil's advocate for the moment than truly believe that Harry deserved the benefit of the doubt.

"I think I should also point out that Harry doesn't have a clear side in this. He might have taken the Mark as a Death Eater and even had every intention of serving Voldemort in exchange for the training needed to get revenge on his relatives...and on us for not doing anything about them sooner... but he was also caught and sentenced to Azkaban before he did anything of value for Voldemort," Bill pointed out quietly. "No one loyal to Voldemort or his Death Eaters can be too happy with him, so it seems to me that the logical decision would be to side with whoever is willing to help him now. And considering where he is at the moment, that looks like us by default."

Harry lips formed a tight line, his eyes hard but otherwise expressionless. A few years ago he would have yelled at them all for talking about him as though he wasn't even present, but for the moment he stayed silent, allowing the rest to get their thoughts out in the open. Letting each of them lay their cards on the table so that he knew where he stood with each one.

Draco shook his head and there was a stubbornness to his stance that she had never seen before. Draco tended to allow thing to happen without stating his opinion too boldly. His position among them had always been one riddled with controversy, not only because of his father but also due to his attitude as a child at Hogwarts. His dedication to the Order had been a long and hard process, and despite her own personal lingering dislike for him, she couldn't deny that he had impressed her with not only his patience but his humility in accepting his place among them. However, the last few days had been different, and while it made sense that Draco's old hard feelings would make him biased towards him, it was also clear that Draco had a clear agenda to discredit everything their former classmate said, and Hermione was beginning to question why the motivation was so strong. "I would just like to point out that the only person that he's killed is an Auror when it should have been a Death Eater. Are we really going to question the obvious? Granger, I know deductive reasoning is rather hard for Gryffindors, but you do tend to be the exception to the general stereotypes, though I suppose Potter always a bit of a weakness for you, wasn't he?"

Hermione felt a swell of indignation, made worse by the fact that when it came to Harry, she honestly didn't know what to think. None of them were objective when it came to him. Draco and Harry had hated one another since they were all eleven years old, she and Ron had once considered Harry their best friend. As much as Draco wanted Harry to be guilty she knew that she was just as hopeful that Harry was innocent.

Tonks shook her head, "We do nothing until we know more about Dumbledore. Potter's been out for a few days and he hasn't done anything to hurt us, a few more hours won't cause us any more trouble than we already have."

The rest of them agreed with varying degrees of reluctance. They needed to shift off to the side more as even more casualities crowded the hospital.

There was a woman, heavily pregnant and obviously exhausted, stumbling down the hallway, a slight cut bleeding on her cheek er only visible source of injury; however, she looked as though she was in shock and it was clearly taking a toll on her body. Harry wasn't the first person to spot her, Hermione saw a few other eyes pass in her direction, but while the others' gazes skimmed past her as they took in the number of casualties that this latest attack had wrought, Harry jumped to action.

"Ma'am, you can have my chair," he called out to her, rushing over on his newly healed leg to help her by taking her arm and leading her over.

"Thank you," the woman said with a sigh of relief. She closed her eyes for a moment and seemed to collect herself. She was young, perhaps only a couple years older than Hermione, and quite pretty. Her blond hair was currently tangled and in disarray but the color was bold and vibrant, her skin outside of the slight disfigurement of the cut smooth and without blemishes.

"Hermione," Harry called and Hermione's attention snapped back to the raven-haired boy standing beside her, "can you conjure her a stool or something? I reckon she should probably elevate her feet or something, right?" Harry asked her worriedly. His voice had a nervous quality that Hermione had only heard from him in the past when facing something deadly. Hermione raised her eyebrows slightly at his level of concern for a stranger but did as he asked.

"Couldn't be bothered to raise the wand yourself Potter," Draco muttered.

Harry said nothing, but Hermione noticed the back of his neck coloring ever so slightly. Harry would never have the shading of a Weasley, but in his own way he could be just as expressive with his feelings and she detected his embarrassment- much like not recognizing a pain potion, Harry didn't know how to conjure a simple stool. Conjuring, of course, was NEWT level, something she doubted that Draco had forgotten. Unlike the bone-mending spell however, conjuring wasn't something that one could generally pick up simply by watching it done many times, as each conjuration varied slightly. Unless Azkaban guards had felt the need to conjure a plethora of stools in Harry's time, she couldn't imagine him having an opportunity to learn.

Rather than rise to the bait however, Harry focused his attention on the young mother-to-be. "Are you alright? Have you seen a Healer?"

"It's just a cut, I'm fine, it was just...such a scare. I never...I work in a tiny office, just the records department, usually the only risk of going to work is dying of boredom," she said with a forced laugh. "But they barged right in..." she exhaled, "the baby was scared...I know that must sound a bit ridiculous, but I swear its true."

"Smart baby," Harry told her with a smile, "they had pretty good reason to be scared if you ask me. Are you sure it's just that cut? Are you hurt anywhere else? Even still you should get checked out..." he added looking around for an available Healer even as he continued speaking when she shook her head to his first questions but there was no one that was available for them to talk to at the moment.

"She's alright Harry, and the Healers aren't going to see anyone that isn't in clear distress until the critical cases are handled," Tonks said gently.

Neville nodded, "I'm going to go and see what I can find out about Dumbledore from Snape and see if the Order has any updates." Bill nodded and followed him out but the rest remained, and in Harry's case, continued to try and sooth the pregnant woman. Harry was crouching so that he was eye level with the woman, holding her hand and telling her that it was going to be alright, trying to get the poor woman to relax. From another person it might have come across as condescending or perhaps overbearing, but somehow Harry managed to only sound concerned and almost protective of the young woman.

It was Tonks, though, that returned to the business at hand, "you said that you work in the records department, records of what?"

Ron nodded, "that's right, do you have any idea why the Death Eaters were attacking?"

"Do we really have to ask her that right now?" Harry interrupted with obvious annoyance, just as Moody and Meyers came up beside them. Daniel had a burn on his left side and his robes were singed and dirty, but neither looked to be seriously hurt. Moody was eyeing Harry with his usual distrust while Daniel had adopted a look of neutrality.

"What's the matter Potter? You were the one that just saying that we should know what You-Know-Who is planning and that the man always has a goal, but now that we have a chance to figure it out, it suddenly 'isn't the right time'?" Draco challenged. Harry balled his fists at his side and after what seemed to be a lost internal argument sprung up from his crouched position, just in time for Auror Meyers to grab him by the shoulders.

"Shut the fuck up!"

"Alright calm down there, what did we walk into?"

"Malfoy has been taking shots about me for the past twenty minutes and I've had it!" Harry shouted. "I've tried taking the high road and ignoring you but enough is enough, you take every single thing that I do and twist it so that I come out looking like the devil. Well I'm bloody well tired of it. I'm not going to stand here and let you interrogate a pregnant mother who just escaped an attack on her office just because you want to make me out to be some sort of psychopath. I'm done being nice and hoping that you all see that you're wrong about me- if any of you can't see what Malfoy's been doing for the past hour, I can't bloody well help you anymore!"

"Draco is only pointing out what we all should know already," Ginny defended but there was a lack of usual venom. She sounded unsure and anxious and it was clear that she was trying hard to rationalize all of Harry's actions in a way that best suited her long standing view of him.

"Of course, how stupid of me," Harry replied with a scathing look, "the Ministry convicted me and we all know that they're never wrong, but you know what, I don't give a damn about that right now. I'm still not going to let you interrogate her!" Harry yelled gesturing angrily towards the now shocked looking pregnant woman.

"No one is interrogating anyone, Harry," Tonks answered firmly. "I asked a simple question, I never forced her to answer and she certainly isn't being accused of anything, but Malfoy is right about one thing, we need information. We need to know as much about this latest attack as possible because if you're right and Voldemort was planning on striking Azkaban it means he's altering his plans and the fact that he's doing it the same week you're released isn't a coincidence."

"Oh my god!" the woman finally exclaimed, "you're-you're _Harry Potter_! I thought you looked familiar but I couldn't...I…I can't believe it, I didn't hear that you had been released…was there new evidence, did they find out you were innocent? I could never believe that you would…that you _could_ …"

Harry flushed awkwardly and for the first time since Hermione had seen him in that tiny visiting room, he seemed genuinely speechless.

"Furloughed for help on a special project for the war, everything else is classified," Moody responded smoothly.

Harry gave a stiff nod but said no more.

The blonde woman looked back and forth between the various people in the room before locking eyes with Harry. "I never really thought that someone like you could be guilty of everything they said about you Harry Potter. I mean...you were the only one tell us the truth about You-Know-Who. Without you...he could have taken over before anyone even know what was happening. Minister Tyson has done so much for us all, to keep us safe...but it was you that made us aware that we needed to be safe in the first place, Mr. Potter, and for that, well, I've never forgotten it."

Harry looked flabbergasted at the woman's words and even the rest of them didn't know quite how to respond. They were the ones that had known Harry, but when push came to shove, they allowed the facts to override what they known about him as a person. It was only now that she had been forced into remembering him as he had been back at school, that doubts of his guilt had started to overcome her.

The woman smiled at Harry before speaking again, "she's right by the way," she finally said gesturing at Tonks. "No one was interrogating me and I don't mind talking about what happened. Anything that helps. My name is Sophie, by the way, Sophie Banks- er, I mean to say, Sophie Diggory, sorry still not used to it, it was…" she flushed as she revealed how recent her marriage was in relation to her obviously advanced pregnancy.

"But anyway, I work in the Estate and Housing Licensing and Oversight Department."

The others didn't look particularly interested in this information, but Hermione was already growing suspicious and didn't like the implications of what she was hearing. There was a quite a lot criminals could do with that type of information.

"Did they steal any files when they came or were they just looking to cause a bit of trouble and leave?" Tonks asked, sounding as though she didn't expect much, but Hermione was growing anxious. She didn't want to jump to any conclusions, but Harry's insistence that nothing that Voldemort did was arbitrary had struck a chord with her and she needed to make sure that they didn't miss anything this time.

Sophie nodded, "they stole quite a lot actually. I-I didn't really think too much about it at the time, I was just trying to keep out of their way, hoping they would let me go; I didn't really see what they stole. But I do know that they didn't hit every office. They didn't even go near the DMLE or the Auror's office. I would have thought they would've been interested in the Department of Mysteries if they were interested in stealing things, but I don't think they went there either."

Tonks nodded, "that's right. That Department goes into automatic lockdown anytime there is a breach of security, new order after what happened in June of '95," she added with a significant look at the rest of them.

"Do you know which other Departments were attacked?" Ron asked her.

"I don't know all of them obviously but a friend of mine told me that they struck the Department of Magical Creatures pretty hard along with the Muggleborn Child Welfare division."

"So they struck departments without a lot of security, that's good. Could mean they lacked the fighting force necessary to breach higher warded areas," Moody reasoned.

"Or it could mean that they were only after the information that certain departments provided and it was just overlooked by the Ministry to safeguard those areas as strongly," Hermione pointed out.

Moody assessed her quietly, "good vigilance, Granger. You're probably right. No sense in doing a job only halfway, if Voldemort was going to plan an attack on the Ministry, there must been a higher purpose."

"Harry said that as well," Neville commented, "but couldn't the higher purpose just have been to draw attention away from the cave that his Death Eaters were attacking? I mean, didn't you mention before that the Ministry only sent its lower-ranked fighters while Voldemort sent out his elite Death Eaters?"

Moody was silent for a moment, clearly weighing the different scenarios and seeing which of them presented them with this most dangerous situation- that was usually how he decided was the most likely event to occur. Myers, however, shook his head, "if the only purpose was to draw attention away from the cave, he could have attacked anywhere. This is the first time since the last war that Death Eaters openly attacked Departments in the Ministry during working hours. Even a few years ago when they attacked the Department of Mysteries, they did it at night, and from the case notes, it seemed like it took weeks of planning and logistics. If He took the trouble to attack, then I would wager that he had a damn good reason for doing it."

Harry frowned at the seemingly eclectic grouping of departments. "What were they after in your office?" He asked Sophie, "Sorry...I haven't had much cause to use a Housing license over the years, what exactly does your office even do?"

She shrugged and smiled softly. "As I said, it's dead boring. The only things that really happen is that we get notified if a new Muggleborn is identified, as once a magical person is living in a house, even if the witch or wizard is a minor and the house is owned by a muggle, the house officially falls under the purview of the Ministry of Magic. This is important, as before the age of eleven special considerations need to be made for magic in muggle areas so that if anything of note happens, the Ministry can take care of it. And obviously, after they start attending Hogwarts, it becomes illegal to perform magic, so records need to be fairly thorough. Though all we really have to do is forward the addresses of muggle/magical hybrid residences to the Misuse of Magic Office. All new residences have to be officially registered, of course- for tax purposes and notification and oversight of magical areas. A lot of Muggleborns and even Half Bloods have been known to reside in muggle areas, and our office coordinates with either Misuse or DMLE to uphold the Statue of Secrecy. And finally, all deeds for family estates once they are out of probate come through our office before they are passed onto the next of kin. Since most of the wills are pretty straight forward, doesn't take much to sign off on the necessaries."

Hermione felt a shot of terror run through her with the implications of what was just said and she could see immediately that Ron was not far behind her putting the pieces together himself. Draco's already pale face seemed to have lost a bit more color than usual and for once didn't have a quick re-joiner for what was being said. Ginny frowned before her eyes widened in horror. "And the Death Eaters took the documents? The registry...all of it?"

Harry frowned and for once looked to be the most confused. "But even if they have the addresses... most people still have protective charms and things, don't they? I mean aren't most Wizard houses Unplottable so they can't be attacked? I don't see what he can do with the information."

Sophie was looking at him in frank surprise as she shook her head. "Where did you hear about Unplottable locations? There aren't supposed to be any in Britain."

Hermione cleared her throat uncomfortably but Harry had long grown accustomed to running with changing situations and did not correct the idea that any such location existed to his knowledge. "First of all Harry, Unplottable locations are _extremely_ rare. Because the Ministry can't properly regulate them they're technically considered illegal but more to the point they are just plain _difficult_. It takes years of enchantments and spells and only certain locations have the proper geographic conditions for such a place to even exist." She glanced at Sophie before plowing ahead, "Why do you think Headquarters never changed locations in all this time? If it were a simple matter of changing Secret-Keepers we would have done so a long time ago."

Harry nodded. "Alright then, but what about protective enchantments, wards and such."

"That's the problem with obtaining the registry," Sophie interjected. "When a new wizarding residence is established, permits are needed to register all magical accommodations. Spacing enhancements, permanent cooling or heating charms, pest control- which as I'm sure you know needs to be updated regularly if meant to effective- and any protective charms. Because they're so hard to put in place, especially for the long term, most people pay the Ministry directly to install them since it's generally cheaper than paying an independent contractor or ward specialist and still having to pay for the registration feels. Now of course there are a lot of people that will add extra wards or other protections on their homes without the proper permits, and truth be told the Ministry rarely if ever checks up on it, but the majority of people just file the standard protections."

"And Voldemort wanted to get this information before he broke out his army..." Harry mused.

"Do you reckon they're after someone in particular?" Ron questioned.

It was Draco that shook his head this time, face grim, almost angry at them, but still prepared to throw in his knowledge as an old pureblood. "Anyone high enough up on the Dark Lord's list to attract his attention would probably have additional protections in place. Merlin help the Death Eater that wandered into Mad-Eye's property and everyone knows it."

"Damn straight, let my guard down once before already," Moody muttered in reference to his kidnapping prior to their Fourth Year.

"But with a full accounting of Muggleborns, Half-Bloods and even Purebloods along with their addresses and at least the basis of their protective charms, there is a lot of damage to be done. Attacking in the way he did...it would be doubtful he would want anyone to recognize his true intentions," he admitted grudgingly, no doubt upset that Harry's theories had been proven correct.

"Harry's right about one thing, things are escalating quickly and I, for one, am tired of playing catch up," Bill told them. "Ron, I think it's time to pay your contact a visit."

Ron looked up in surprise, before smiling brightly, "you think he would know the details?"

"Something this big? Absolutely, at the very least he would have had to have been told parts of the plan and you know that as long as you ask the right questions, he can't get out of answering you."

"What contact is this?" Harry asked.

"About seven or eight months ago, Ron had a brilliant idea," Hermione told Harry as Ron blushed brightly beside her.

"I don't know about brilliant-"

"It's a damn sight better than what we were doing before," Ginny encouraged.

Harry looked over at his former friend in interest and Ron took up the topic with delight. "We were on this raid and I got ahold of one of the Inner Circle Death Eaters, had him dead to right and there was no way he could escape. He was begging me for his life and the whole time I kept thinking that it was disgusting that this guy would kill innocent people but would do anything to save his own life, which is when it struck me- he would do anything to save his own life. Including reveal information from time to time that he would really rather we never find out."

Harry looked rather stunned for a moment before leaning forward with poorly concealed excitement. "Who exactly can you get information from?"

"Charles Avery, one of Voldemort's most trusted advisors."

 **A/N: Thank you all again for you reviews and theories I really do love hearing them.**

 **Quick note: I know in a lot of stories wards seem to be almost all powerful but in canon they are really only described as 'protective enchantments' and are able to be broken down with enough force. In Deathly Hallows it was after Voldemort stages his silent coup of the Ministry that he is able to attack the Burrow and its explained as saying that once Voldemort has the 'might' of the Ministry behind him, the protective spells are almost worthless, which is where the idea of the Housing office came from.**

 **As you can see a few characters, like Hermione, are starting to connect the dots but don't worry there will of course be a more satisfying reveal at the right time**


	18. The Truth Doesn't Always Set You Free

**Chapter 18: The Truth Doesn't Always Set You Free**

" _Charles Avery_ _, one of Voldemort's most trusted advisors."_

Harry couldn't believe what he was hearing. After he had found out that Dumbledore was unconscious and very possibly dying before the man could live up to his end of their bargain by telling the Order that he was innocent, Harry had resigned himself to the bitter but sadly familiar feeling of disappointment. He had been convinced that there was nothing that he could do to convince the rest of the Order that he was truly innocent. But now, this was his chance.

"You have to let me come with you!" he heard himself blurt out before his more rational side had even tried to come up with a clever means of getting to join Ron and the others when they spoke to Avery. Desperation combined with the overwhelming surge of emotions he had been feeling the last couple of days had stripped him of any cunning and patience, and he inwardly cursed himself for reverting to the reckless teenager he had been at 15.

"No way will you be leaving this hospital unless it's back to Azkaban, Potter," Moody growled.

"How do you expect me to escape with all of you there? If you're so worried about it... take my wand back, but you have to let me come with you!" Harry insisted, committing to his path now that he had pre-emptively spoken his mind.

Tonks, who Harry had been betting on being more sympathetic towards him than the others, shook her head. "You're lucky that you're still out, as it is. The Ministry has officially recalled your furlough, we have no legal means to have you out of custody any longer. Technically speaking, Draco's right, we should be bringing you back now, but you've helped us..." she coughed uncomfortably, and Harry narrowed his eyes at her casually glossing over the fact that he had saved her son's life. He saw her take a breath and square her shoulders a bit before announcing, "We'll wait until Dumbledore wakes up to bring you back but beyond that..." she shook her head again.

Harry bit back a growl of frustration. Once upon a time Harry would never have dreamed of using the fact that he had helped them- that he had saved Teddy and Hermione and Ginny and even Dumbledore's lives and had still managed to retrieve the Horcrux just like they wanted- as leverage. When he had been younger, he had never kept score of his good deeds, never felt that he needed to be repaid or that he was owed something in recompense for them, but Harry had learned his lesson. All things came with a cost. He had paid dearly for circumstances that he couldn't control and now he was going to ensure that he was _repaid_ for services rendered. He knew now from experience that no one could be counted on to give you your fair share, and there were times when you were forced to take it.

Harry couldn't allow another opportunity at freedom to pass him by again without a fight, but it was increasingly hard to think clearly. The last few days had been a whirlwind for him in ways he doubted the others could even comprehend. He had gone well past grief when Maggie had died and become numb. He had felt nothing but misery and a deeply rooted depression so that even anger had been snuffed out at first. Getting out of Azkaban, seeing his former friends, witnessing for himself how thoroughly the Order had been fooled, being tempted with freedom only to have snatched away- _learning about fucking Horcruxes_ alone had been enough to send him over the edge. But he had managed himself pretty well, hethought. He had only slipped away from himself mentally once, and even then, he had managed to not blow up at them all in a mad rage. He felt that he should be granted some congratulations on his sanity.

Until he had seen Sophie.

The woman beside him, swollen with advanced pregnancy and clearly scared for the life she was carrying, had the same shade of blonde hair that Maggie had once possessed. When he had first seen her, staggering down the hall, eyes wide and afraid, lips trembling slightly, he had thought that he had seen a ghost...which of course, made no sense at all. Maggie had not been pregnant long enough to form the tell-tale rounded belly Sophie had. The Maggie that had died in his arms had looked at him with similarly wide eyes, but hers had not filled with fear and shock, instead her final hours had been filled with nothing but desolation and helplessness.

It occurred to Harry that in Azkaban he had never had to stay in command of his faculties for long periods of time. He had always managed to maintain his wits when dealing with the Aurors, and had even managed well when he had spent time with the other prisoners, recognizing even in his weakened and often befuddled state, that any sign of weakness would ultimately destroy him. But in Azkaban there had been so many long hours of lonely oppression. Hours upon hours when there had been nothing but time and the occasional dementor to keep a person company. After Felix and later Maggie had died, Harry had had literally no one to confide in, no one to distract him or stimulate him, and no motivation not to seep into the increasingly appealing fugue that had started to dominate his life. As scary and confusing as his moments of lost time had been, they had also provided a respite from the ever-oppressive pain of the present. The suffocating loneliness, regret, loss and pain from those he had lost and finally the inescapable feeling of helplessness that being a prisoner gave a person. It had started to feel oddly appealing, and despite Harry's conscious desire to retain his own sanity and free will, he was also unable to deny the fact that it was _simpler_ when he escaped reality.

However, over the last few days he had been forced to stay in the present and he was beginning to find it exhausting. After the ordeal at the cave, and now the shocking reminder of Maggie, he could feel his consciousness blurring. When he had seen that the woman in front of him was real and alive and in need of help that they could provide, rather than watch those last minutes and seconds tick by helplessly, he had forced himself to think. He had needed to remember to ask for things that he couldn't provide for the poor woman- like the conjured stool. _This was not the same_ , he needed to tell himself over and over. This wasn't Maggie, and though the woman had been attacked, the assault had not been directed at her personally, nor had she been a victim because someone had been trying to hurt Harry personally. He needed to stay present so that he could save this woman even when he couldn't save Maggie.

But then Sophie had believed him. No one since Felix had believed so easily in his innocence. Even Maggie had first thought him guilty at first, it had been months before she had trusted him fully, and even then it had been after their first kiss that she had believed in him completely but Sophie...the woman was living proof that the Ministry had not convinced everyone to turn against him, even if it had always felt like that to him in the past.

He took a breath, he couldn't think about that right now. He needed to be rational, he needed to give them a reason for why he had to be there. He needed to stay present for another hour. Surely in an hour he could prove his innocence and he could get the sleep that he so desperately wanted right now.

"How do you know that Avery will tell you the truth? He might have escaped Azkaban after the First War but Avery has been a Death Eater for decades. His father was rumored to be one of the first Death Eaters in existence. I reckon he probably knew him as Tom Riddle. How can you be sure of what he says?"

"Unbreakable Vow," Ron responded proudly. "Avery has sworn to tell us nothing but the truth and if he breaks his word...well he dies straight away."

Harry nodded slowly; he had never witnessed an Unbreakable Vow, but he had learned of their existence in Azkaban. From what he had heard, very few wizards ever agreed to submit to one because not only were the Vows permanent, which meant that if at any time in the future the Vow was broken, the penalty was death, but because Unbreakable Vows are tied to the very soul of the person in a way most people would consider Dark Magic. Wording and conditions were extremely important and, in all but the rarest or most desperate situations, wizards refused to place themselves in such a vulnerable position for any reason. An Unbreakable Vow tied two people together for life in an intimate and yet twisted way. One person owing the other a service that they were compelled from their very soul to complete. The closest thing to the Unbreakable Vow that existed in 'polite' society were the oaths that Aurors and now nearly all Ministry employees took to defend the Minister and uphold the 'primary objectives of the current administration for the good of the Wizarding World' with their lives. It was the vow that Daniel Myers was bound to that had prevented him from turning his back on a Ministry that he had learned to be corrupt. But the oaths were different than the Vow. They didn't weigh on the soul in the same way.

Needless to say, Felix had told him that Unbreakable Vows were a rather taboo subject among most wizards, and he found himself surprised that the Order, usually known for half measures, or largely ineffectual methods, had thought to use one.

"Isn't that a bit broad for an Unbreakable Vow?" Harry asked, honestly curious. Telling someone that they had to 'tell the truth' or they would die was practically an impossible task. Any time they didn't offer a long enough answer, any time they didn't tell the other person something once it was learned after the question had been asked could be considered a lie of omission or an evasion of the truth.

"It's in the wording," Hermione explained, a hint of her old excitement over some academic curiosity present in her tone. "Ron was really quite clever with it. But because of the dangers that exist in stating anything too broadly, we had to be very careful with the parameters for the vow. It only pertains to direct questions given to Avery and they have to be asked by Ron himself. Using more than one person opened up too many variables. Avery can omit information without the Vow breaking, but if presented with a straightforward question, he is not allowed to lie or remain silent. It does present the problem that we have to be very specific with our questions but without another source of information into Voldemort's Inner Circle..." she trailed off, suddenly uncomfortable at the reminder of why the Order no longer had a spy. Harry's supposed betrayal. Harry looked over at Draco whose lips had formed a thin line, his shoulders taut with tension and it was clear that the Malfoy Heir was decidedly upset with this new avenue of information being presented at this time.

Harry nodded slowly. It seemed that it was a thorough vow, and he could admit that he was impressed that his former friend, who remembered to be rather rash and lacking in attention to detail, had thought of it.

"Of course, we have no guarantee that Avery knows any about this," Ginny pointed out with a frown. "We've had that problem before."

"An attack like this? This must have taken a lot of planning to set into motion. He has to know something about it," Hermione chimed in. Ginny nodded her agreement, but Draco was shaking his head. "Do you think we're wasting our time? We need to worry about Potter."

"Guarding one person doesn't require the entire Order," Tonks cut in smoothly and Harry was relieved to have her support. "The rest of us can watch Harry; Ron, you go and find out what you can from Avery." Something about the situation was niggling Harry and he couldn't quite put his finger on it for a minute before all at once, realization struck.

"I take it that none of you discussed _me_ with him?" Harry asked carefully.

Ron frowned, but shook his head, "you never came up in anything that we asked him about. We were never concerned with discussing captured Death- er, well, that is to say, I never say any reason to ask him about it," he finished awkwardly, rubbing the back of flaming red neck.

Harry nodded, expecting the answer and trying to make his tired mind come up with a way to convince Ron to ask about him to the Death Eater. However, he was interrupted by the reappearance of Bill and Neville as well as a visibly tired Snape.

"What's going on with Dumbledore?" Harry asked him without preamble.

"The Headmaster will recover, if not entirely than quite well considering the potency of the potion that was ingested in combination with his advanced age. However, Potter, if you are thinking you are going to be getting...information from him in the next several hours you will be disappointed. The Headmaster is currently in a coma-like state and I expect him to remain so for anywhere from next 24 to 72 hours."

Harry nodded, honestly surprised to hear that the Headmaster would survive at all. The kind of luck he usually had would have almost guaranteed his demise before he could relate Harry's innocence to the rest; as it stood now, even if they returned him to Azkaban, Dumbledore would still be obligated to get him out as soon as he woke up. It would be a couple of days, at most. Not at that Harry had any intention of leaving his fate to Dumbledore alone, but the rare feeling of a safety net gave him an unfamiliar feeling of security.

"We think Voldemort is going to be targeting specific people. He went after the housing records," Tonks explained to catch the others up.

Severus nodded, "I told Albus that the Dark Lord has enemies that he needs to deal with before moving forward with his final plans. It seems he seeks to eliminate the risk and is advancing his timetable quite a bit."

"You knew about this?" Daniel asked in surprise.

"I have always revealed the information that I have to the relevant sources, even if I don't enjoy sitting around for hours discussing the banalities of life as the rest of you seem to," Snape answered curtly.

"Ah yes, your mystery sources that you refuse to tell us about," Moody snarled the statement like it was an accusation.

"Alastor, I grew bored with your feelings regarding me a very long time ago and have no wish to rekindle your old suspicions now. When I was a spy with the Death Eaters, I provided more useful information than the rest of the Order combined, and when I was no longer able to draw upon those sources, I ensured that I secured my own. Rather than criticize the decisions that I chose to make 20 years ago, do you not think it's about time that you finally acknowledged that my information has never led the Order astray?"

"Then do you have any idea who he might be targeting?"

"No one that would have a legally registered address with only the standard protective charms I assure you."

Moody scowled and the other Aurors gave Snape similar looks of discontent and anger, but Harry nodded; that was the conclusion that he had reached as well. Anyone high enough up on Voldemort's hit list that he would target specifically wouldn't use just standard protections, they would have gone into hiding long ago, so what was the main purpose of the break-in?

"Was this the primary goal then? Or a distraction from something else?" Harry asked aloud.

"Why don't you tell us? Since you seem to know so much about it." Draco challenged and Harry was upset to see Bill and Neville look at him expectantly, even Tonks looked as though he would have inside information. Though was it his imagination or did Ron and Hermione look slightly exasperated.

"Yes, clearly Potter is the mastermind behind all of the Dark Lord's schemes," Snape sniped back with biting sarcasm and Harry felt his eyebrows rise.

"I never said Potter was the mastermind-"

"Oh, was that not going to be you next inane insinuation? I happen to find the idea of Potter being the secret mastermind to be only slightly more ridiculous than the idea that Potter is privy to his plans at all."

"What do you mean?" Bill asked. "Why wouldn't Potter know anything about his plans?"

Snape rolled his eyes looking every bit the condescending professor that Harry remembered from Hogwarts, only back then Snape had never sided with Harry about anything. "We spent weeks working on getting Potter out of Azkaban even for a short time frame. And during our reconnaissance, refresh my memory, but how many visitors did Potter receive?"

A few people flushed at the reminder that they had left Harry to his own devices, but Harry was emboldened that at long last _someone_ was asking the right question- any questions- about his guilt.

"We know that no one visited Harry why does that..." Ginny trailed off, "

No one was there to pass him information, so he wouldn't know."

Daniel looked over at Harry with a raised eyebrow and Harry struggled to maintain a defiant look. As the only people familiar with the inner workings of Azkaban, both were aware that no one had to visit a person directly in order to pass them information. Information was traded as though it were galleons in Azkaban, and Harry had learned quite a lot without ever being a marked or supporting Death Eater, and what was more is that he was fairly certain that Snape knew he wasn't going to correct this little misconception. A few years ago, he never would have thought the only person to actually believe and help him would be Severus Snape, but Harry had learned, long before Azkaban, as a small child in a cupboard that had seemingly been forgotten by the world, that beggars couldn't be choosers and he would take his help where it was offered.

There was an uncomfortable silence as the others struggled to solve this little puzzle.

"Ron, go and talk to Avery, find out what he knows," Hermione said at last.

"Wait...wait...why would Avery know about this? We're wasting our time!" Draco asked and Harry was positively delighted to hear that small thread of panic that had lanced through his voice.

Ginny looked at him in surprise, "I thought that we had already agreed that he would go. It can't hurt to check right? I mean, he's really our only chance at this point."

Harry had to bite his tongue from uttering the remark that almost escaped him, that even the stupidest of people were right once in a while. Instead he forced himself to appear as neutral as possible. As his mind raced to find an answer, he found himself stuck on a question that had plagued him during late night, lonely hours in Azkaban, something that as time had gone on, mere curiosity had been transformed into an aching need to know.

"Ron...wait, before you go- what were you going to say to me in the tent after the First Task?"

Ron blinked and looked blankly at him for nearly a full 30 seconds before comprehension started to dawn in his eyes, "You mean back in Fourth Year?"

Harry nodded, "yeah, you came to apologize to me and I told you to forget it, and...well, since then, I couldn't help but wonder...what were you going to say?"

Ron looked vaguely stunned by the question and Harry could see the familiar red flush creep up neck, a sure sign that he was embarrassed or similarly stressed by the question.

For a moment Harry thought that he wasn't going to answer, or would tell him that he was being ridiculous and petty to bring up something from so long ago, but after a moment, Ron's expression shifted and Harry wasn't quite sure what it was meant to portray, but he thought it was something much more complex than simple regret. "Back then...I'm not really sure. I would have told you that I was wrong, and that I was stupid to believe that you put your name in the Goblet when I bloody knew more than anyone how much you hated attention. I would have told you that I was a prat for being mad at you when really...I was just jealous that it was you and not me. But now..." and Harry looked up curiously, because there was real pain in Ron's voice. "I think I should have told you that it didn't matter if you had put your name in the Goblet or not. You were my mate, my _best_ mate, and I should have bloody well been there for you. I should have been there for you a lot of the time and I wasn't. And...as much as you had to pay for what you did back at the muggles, Harry...I shouldn't have turned my back on you the way that I did."

Ron looked around at the people assembled and Harry wondered if he saw the same things in the other's expressions. Hermione looked close to tears, Ginny's face was picture of frustrated, impotent fury. Neville looked hesitant but cautiously guilty. Malfoy looked as though he couldn't decide between anger and fear.

"I should have gone to visit you in Azkaban, Harry. I know that, and I wish I could say that I didn't realize it at the time but honestly...I did, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm not sorry for what I said on the stand or telling more about the Dursleys than you wanted. I'm not sorry for joining the Order and fighting against Voldemort or if it had come to it...fighting against you, but I owed you enough to hear your side of things and for that, I am truly sorry."

And there it was, something Harry had been waiting for so long to hear. But was it enough? Did it matter after all this time that Ron was sorry? He didn't think it did, but he couldn't unpack that kind of emotional weight at the moment. Instead, he struggled to keep thinking about what he needed. And he needed Ron to hear the truth, and for the first time he not only had a way for Ron to hear the truth from an incontrovertible source but a means of leveraging him to do it. Guilt.

"If you're sorry about never hearing my side of things, ask Avery about me. _Promise_ me that when you ask him about the attack that you ask him about what happened the day I was arrested at Privet Drive and everything that led up to it. And make sure that you ask him about the leak in the Order as well. You have a spy and I bet you anything that Avery knows exactly who it is."

Ron looked faintly stunned but he nodded as he left, and Harry felt as though a large hippogriff had shifted off his chest. The truth was finally going to come out. And he was gratified to see from the greenish tinge to Malfoy's skin...he could see it too.

HPHPHPHP

Ron and Neville apparated to the clearing outside of Avery's isolated Tudor style house. The house, though now over a hundred years old, had been built in a purposely older style so as to give the impression that the family line was older than it truly was. The Victorian Era had been littered with similarly built estates at the time, but Ron had always inwardly thought that the Avery's would have done better to model themselves after the mock-Gothic style that the Notts had been infamous for. As it stood now, the house was not as grand nor as opulent as the Malfoy Manor, though certainly of large enough size, and clearly intended for multi-generational use, as was the custom.

The fact remained, however, that the Avery's had always been richer in land size than in actual property, and apparating to the destination meant a long, rather winding walk. As they made their way towards the house, Ron noted- not for the first time- that in the decades since Charles' father had passed, it was clear that the family was in a steep decline, both financially and socially. The field was brown and unkempt, the vines covering the terrace were an odd combination of both overgrown and dead, and there was a general feeling of neglect that Ron knew from experience extended well into the house itself. For once, the walk was more welcome than something he saw as an annoying obstacle as his thoughts were so pre-occupied with the conversation of the past hour that Ron was happy to have a few minutes to sort them out before having to confront his contact.

He had been prepared to hate Harry after all this time. The boy that he had once considered his best friend in the world had turned out not only to be murderer and comfortable using the Dark Arts but also had been such a good _liar_. That was the part that the rest of them didn't seem to understand. Ron hated what Harry had done to the Dursleys, and even worse to the old squib, but he could understand it. He could still remember that look of awe on Harry's face when he, Fred and George and rescued him from the barred window of his locked room before Second Year, how Harry had honestly thought at the time that they weren't going to bring him along, that the three of them could see him trapped in that tiny room and turn their backs on him. He remembered the way that Harry's shoulders had always hunched together whenever anyone asked about his relatives, or the way that he would jump at the chance to stay at Hogwarts any time that he could. As a kid, Ron had shrugged all these signs off, thinking that they were normal, thinking that Harry must be able to handle it all because that was the type of person Harry was. He wasn't the kind to complain and cry about things that he couldn't control, Harry bent down and did the work.

Ron knew better now, of course. He knew that the treatment that Harry had suffered had caused him to snap, and though he had been shocked and appalled and just... _angry_ that he had done it, over time Ron thought he could have forgiven it all. He could have forgiven Harry for snapping the way that he had, but it was the lies that got to him. It was the fact that Harry had never trusted them enough to confide in and that he had lured them all the Department of Mysteries that night. Ron would have followed Harry anywhere, without question. Hell, if Harry had come to him and said that he couldn't take the Dursleys anymore and wanted revenge, Ron would have helped him attack them himself.

Instead, he had learned that he had never known Harry, and that was worst of it all, the fact that they hadn't been friends the way Ron had thought they had always been. That the boy that Ron had considered himself closer to than any of his actual siblings was essentially a stranger. And so, for the past four years, he had treated him like one. He hadn't gone to Azkaban to hear more lies because he had been worried that he might just believe them. He hadn't poured over the case files or questioned the Dursleys or defended his name to the Order because he had been worried that he might just convince himself that Harry was innocent, just as he had been so certain of Harry's innocence that summer day in 1996 when he had been unexpectedly called in for questioning.

And when Ron had gone with Hermione to the prison only three days prior to get Harry, it had been done with a feeling of detached professionalism that had been covering anger and distain. He had been prepared to _hate_ him.

Except Ron's fears had been answered, because he was beginning to believe the lie. Harry wasn't a stranger- not really. He was quieter, he was rougher around the edges, he was more reserved with his opinions and feelings and he was colder to all of them, and yet he was still depressingly the same person that Ron had laughed with in the Common Room or shared glances with behind Hermione's back when the witch was being particularly exasperating. He was the same determined boy that had insisted on going after the Philosopher's Stone, who had carried on after Ginny when the tunnel had collapsed and had blocked Ron's path.

He had built Harry up in his mind to be this...monster, and what he saw now was the same friend he had made as an awkward eleven year old,terrified of having to live up to the legacy of having one brother that had been Head Boy and another that had been Quidditch Captain. Harry had never compared Ron to his brothers, never looked at him as though he was a disappointment or lacking in some fundamental way.

' _What were going to say to me after the First Task?'_

He should have been there for Harry, it was that simple. And it was with immense pain that he realized now, too late, that he hadn't learned a damn thing since he had been fourteen years of age. He had never stopped to consider the fact that it might not matter what Harry had done, because the Harry that he knew always had a reason. The Harry that Ron knew...had always had terrible situations thrust on him but had rarely caused them himself. Harry had the Dark Mark...how had none of them questioned- _truly honestly questioned_ \- how that had come to happen? Because Ron had known Harry: that hadn't been- couldn't possibly have been- all a lie. And the boy that Ron had known would have died before he would have joined Voldemort so why hadn't he ever asked why?

For the first time, it didn't seem to matter that Harry had turned their back on them and everything that they had fought for because it was finally starting to dawn on him that they had betrayed him as well. Ron had never been a particularly complicated person. He played Keeper in Quidditch because it was the only position left when he had played with his brothers. He ate the same breakfast every morning and liked chess because it was the only thing he could feel confident with his own skills in. He was not a complicated person and the idea that a person could take the Dark Mark and still not be completely evil was not something he was prepared to comprehend. Was it possible? Could a person be a Death Eater and still be a good person? ...no they couldn't. Of that, Ron was certain. A Death Eater wasn't a good person, but could they have good qualities? Or could they have a good reason for the bad things that they haddone? Ron had been raised on the idea that there was right and there was wrong, and there was really no question of which one a person should follow, but seeing Harry again only reminded him that none of them had done right by him... so in the end, what did that mean for all of them?

It was with a churning stomach of guilt that Ron raised his fist and rapped on the door. Neville was still beside him, quiet and thoughtful, and Ron wondered if the other Gryffindor had been having similar thoughts. It was hard to say. Neville and Harry had never been as close as he and Harry had been, but in the same token, Ron also knew that there had been a time when there were few people that Neville had admired more than their former dormmate. Harry had been the one to stand up for Neville when they were kids. Harry then had encouraged him to become the fighter that he was today. How did Neville feel about the fact that the boy that had not only trained him to fight but had given him the confidence to doso, was now on the opposite side of the wand?

Ron had to knock a second time as he waited impatiently for Avery toanswer; he wasn't surprised that the man had kept him waiting, he knew from experience that Avery liked to exert small mutinies as a means of maintaining a semblance of control. He had been meeting in this style with the Death Eater for the past year and was still quite proud of his idea to use the man for information rather than simply turning him over to the Ministry. Of course, if any of his superiors at the Auror Academy had even an inkling that Ron was willing to do something so unorthodox, he would lose his spot in a heartbeat, if not be arrested outright for aiding and abetting a known criminal. But Ron felt if you were dealing with an opponent that was unwilling to follow the typical rules of engagement, then basic strategy said that you must adapt as well.

There was some shuffling before the door opened and the strangely handsome face of Charles Avery appeared. Ron always thought 'strangely' because he wasn't entirely sure where the man got his looks. From what Ron had seen, the rest of the Avery's were nothing particularly special when it came to looks, and they were all so heavily inbred after centuries of refusing to dilute their own bloodlines that to find anyone that had a unique look about them was a magic all unto itself. However, handsome was the only way to describe Charles. He was a powerfully built wizard with a stature that rivalled Ron's own impressive 6'3'', and with features that seemed to argue the point that one couldn't judge a book by its cover; nothing about his boyish good looks were what Ron would have thought a ruthless killer would have looked like.

"Future Auror Weasley, to what do I owe the distinct pleasure?" Charles asked in that annoyingly confident tone that only a Pureblood could manage when greeting someone that effectively owned a part of their dignity, if not their very soul.

Ron squared his shoulders, determined not to show the man in front of him how much it bothered him that he refused to be intimated by him. He honestly shouldn't have found joy in holding someone's freedom and even their life in his hands, but Ron would be lying if he said that he didn't enjoy the feeling more than he should have.

"I see you're still here," he answered coolly.

"As per our agreement. I only leave when ordered by my other master. You should consider thanking him, he trained me so very well for you," Charles smiled, and his eyes glinted just as Ron felt a shiver run down his spine at the comparison between himself and Voldemort. And just like that any thrill of power he might have had died in the pit in his stomach. He would have felt worse if he didn't know that had been Avery's intention.

"We came here to ask you a few questions," Ron told him, and Avery inclined his head.

"What do you know about the attack on the Ministry this afternoon?"

"A broad question indeed," Avery answered with a grimace of distaste. Broad questions were hard to satisfy with the vow and it was clear that the Death Eater was nervous about censoring information. "I knew it was scheduled and that the Dark Lord would be after various records kept in Departments with limited security. As you are no doubt aware, these records will allow the Dark Lord access to most any private residence in Britain, as well as provide a comprehensive list of…undesirables…that will need to dealt with in due time."

"Does he mean Order members, Aurors or just Muggleborns in general?" Neville asked and Ron repeated the question back to Avery so that he would be forced to answer.

"All of them to one extent or another. Obviously, some are of greater priority in the short term, but once the Dark Lord has established his command, well, I imagine you can understand that he will need to address several problems that currently exist under our current…regime."

"Who was he looking for specifically? Who's he looking to target?"

Avery shrugged and gave him a grim smile, "I haven't been given that information."

Ron ground his teeth together and swore. This, of course, was the major problem with only having one reliable source within the Death Eater ranks, the lack of scope. Voldemort had always played his cards close to the vest, but it seemed that after the discovery of Snape as a spy within his own Inner Circle, the man had become even more paranoid about security and secrets. He had broken the Death Eaters into small independent cells that operated on a need-to-know basis only. From what Ron gathered, no one, with the possible exception of Bellatrix, was given more information than related to their own specific tasks. When questioned, Avery often didn't even know the names of new recruits or the end goals of missions that he would personally be assigned. If Ron had had his way, the Order would have established similar Vows with many other Death Eaters, but opportunities were hard to come by and many of the older members were not as comfortable with using the nearly forbidden branch of magic.

Ron took a breath and gave the traitor before him a hard look before he asked the question that he had been dying to ask for the past hour…truth be told, he had been dying to ask for the past four years, but had been too afraid that he wouldn't like the answer. Afraid to learn that Harry was guilty, terrified to learn that he might be innocent...

"Did Voldemort frame Harry Potter for torturing his relatives and killing a squib?"

Charles' smug smile vanished in a heartbeat and his face turned ghost white, his mouth gaped stupidly for a moment while his now blue lips searched for an answer. "Why…why would you think…"

"Answer the question," Ron demanded sternly because there was no way to determine what he thought about anything, but he needed to know.

"He…the Dark Lord…"

"Yes or NO!" 

"Yes!" Avery gasped out and his eyes grew wide and frightened. He looked nervously back at his house. Ron's mouth fell open and he could hear his breath coming in pants, though it felt like he was getting enough air, he also felt as though he had been punched in the gut, but the pain was both more intense and more distant than it should have been.

"How…" he heard Neville say.

"Not here damn it! Fuck… **fuck**! If you need to know, we talk about this away from the house," Avery snarled and any of that former confidence that Ron had both admired and detested was gone. The informant stalked away from them, charcoal grey robes billowing behind him as though a fierce wind had picked up as he moved towards the open, desolate looking field.

For a moment, Ron and Neville were both too stunned to move, and it was with a feeling of unreality that Ron turned to look at Neville and saw the shock and approaching horror that he felt reflected in Neville's face.

"I didn't think...I mean...the Aurors...the evidence, and even Hermione was so certain, I mean...he was _guilty,_ " Neville practically moaned.

"It's Harry," Ron heard himself say as though from a distance. "The least likely answer... _fuck,_ I should have known that crazy git would find himself in an impossible situation."

Avery was several meters away from them, out in the brown, dead grass and pacing rapidly. Ron had never seen the Death Eater so agitated. Not even when he had initially agreed to the terms that Ron had laid out and had willingly taken the Unbreakable Vow had he seemed so nervous and unhinged. There had been times when Avery had scowled or grimaced, times that he had twisted uncomfortably as Ron had asked just the right questions, and gotten just a little more information than the man had expected to have to give him, but never had Ron seen the man display such panic and uncertainty, and it was that fear and dread that convinced Ron of Harry's innocence even more than the confirmation from the Vow. It was clear as day that what Avery had just revealed had been among his most guarded of secrets.

Ron took a shuddering breath and squared his shoulders. _I think I should have told you that it didn't matter if you put your name in the Goblet or not. You were my mate, my_ best _mate, and I should have bloody well been there for you. I should have been there for you a lot of the time and I wasn't._

The words echoed in his mind because as true as they were, they skated around the crux of the issue- Harry had been his best friend and even after all this time, Ron had continued to ignore the obvious: Harry never would have done it and it was ridiculous for him- for any of them- to doubt that for a second.

And that was the point Harry had been trying to make, wasn't it? Because he had done this to Harry before. He had turned his back the second things had gotten difficult and he had believed what he had wanted to or else he had believed what everyone else told him to believe, rather than what he should have known to be the truth. He had never deserved Harry's friendship and all he wanted to do was run back to the hospital and beg for Harry's forgiveness, but first he needed to know. He could not be ignorant of his own complicity anymore.

"You're going to tell me everything," Ron tone was low and dangerous, his hands balled into fists lest he kill the man in front of him instead of getting the information that he needed.

"Finally asking the right questions, then?" Avery asked, that old sense of confidence returning with a sneer, even if it was clear that the man was still scared out of his mind that he had revealed his master's secrets.

"Bet you've been having a real laugh that I never thought to ask sooner," Ron chastised himself with a shake of his head.

Ron took a breath, he had been so stupid for so long...but not anymore. He needed to think this through carefully, he needed to ensure that he didn't miss anything important.

"Did someone use Polyjuice to impersonate Harry?"

"Yes."

"Who did it?"

Avery bit his lip but didn't hesitate for more than a moment, "it was the Dark Lord."

Ron shook his head, his mind racing over all the evidence that they had collected against Harry. Those hours that he had spent in the Ministry as the Aurors had questioned him over and over again. When they had presented him with information that he couldn't explain away, information that had seemed to prove that Harry was guilty.

"They checked Harry's wand, the Unforgivables were used on it."

Avery was silent and Ron glared at him. "I'm giving you one chance to make this easy, tell us what we need to know, or I swear I will ask you so many questions so fast you can't possibly answer them well enough to satisfy the vow."

The Death Eater bared his teeth, but seemed to realize that there was no point in dragging things out indefinitely. "The spell only shows what the wand cast, not who was casting the spells."

"They share a wand core," Neville said quietly from beside him. "Voldemort could have used Harry's wand."

"What about the Veritaserum though?" Ron asked with a frown, "Harry admitted to using them."

Avery's eyes glinted and there was distinct amusement when he said, "he admitted to using _one_ of them. Not that he was successful, mind you, from the way that Bellatrix tells it, he made a Cruciatus feel like a bad sunburn."

"Bellatrix?" Neville asked sharply and Ron knew how much the other boy despised the woman responsible for his parents' condition.

The Death Eater arched his brow at them, "I imagine you've forgotten after all this time that Potter watched her murder his precious godfather. The Dark Lord told us that Black was the only person that gave a shit about Potter and Potter damn well knew it. The story is quite popular, you know, I've heard that Potter was quite unhinged when he cast the _Crucio_ at dear Bella, then he didn't even defend himself against the Dark Lord. If it weren't for Dumbledore, he would be dead. Do you think he was upset that he survived?" Avery taunted. "If I were Potter, I would have wanted to join Black. Can't imagine that he would want to stick around for the _loyal_ and _faithful_ friends he had left."

Ron felt sick guilt coil in his stomach, and he could see the feeling reflected in Neville's pale face.

Ron took a deep breath, forcing himself to think back to that miserable day when he had learned all of the details of the attack on the Dursleys, now seeing it all with a different light. "How did they swap Harry out? They would have had to break the blood wards, and I thought that was impossible." 

"Potter's uncle," Avery answered and for the first time since the truth had come out, the man looked smug once again. "The man truly did hate Potter, the stupid muggle thought that magic was unnatural and wanted the boy out of his house. When he found out that he could not get rid of the kid and make a good stack of muggle paper money, he couldn't be more eager."

"So he invited you in and you took him? He never beat up Harry?" Neville asked, and despite not being obligated by the Vow, Avery answered with relish in his voice.

"Oh, the muggle beat him alright. Starved him for a bit first, from what I've been told," Avery told them smugly. "The fat bastard really tore into him and from what I understand it had been a long time coming, been wanting to do it that way for years-"

"Harry said that his uncle didn't usually take it that far…" Ron muttered, putting pieces together in a way that had never fit before.

"And then what? Vernon must have dragged Harry from the house to get him to leave because that summer, Harry knew about the blood protection, he wouldn't have left willingly."

Avery nodded. "Tossed him in the boot of the car and delivered him to me. The Dark Lord was there, took some of Potter's hair for the Polyjuice and was sure to Mark him. Never liked that part, myself," the Death Eater confided, pulling back the sleeve of his own robe and exposing the Dark Mark proudly. "The Mark is an honor, one that Potter didn't deserve, but of course my master is thorough with his plans and he always knows best."

"What about Snape?" Neville asked. "How could Voldemort have possibly known that Snape had turned on him without Harry telling him?"

Avery cocked an eyebrow at them, a look that might have looked smug had he not still looked deathly pale. "You honestly never figured it out, did you? You all trust in that fool Dumbledore and that rubbish he is always sprouting of 'second chances' so much that the idea never even occurred to you?"

Ron frowned reflexively at the insult to Dumbledore, but said nothing. It was true after all. They did all bow to Dumbledore's word. More so than Avery had even criticized them for- because Dumbledore had never actually condemned Harry as the guilty party. In all this time, no matter how many times the subject of Harry's betrayal had been discussed, or how many times they had wondered where things had gone wrong, the Headmaster had been silent...and that had somehow been enough for them. As long as Dumbledore hadn't defended Harry as he had in the past, that had been enough for them to assume the worst. In Sixth Year, before their friendship would become as fractured as it eventually would, he remembered Hermione commenting on the fact that Dumbledore must be heartbroken to lose Harry the way they did, that the reason for his silence was because it was too painful for him to discuss.

"It was someone else? Someone in the Order?" Neville asked warily. "No...no one would do that...they..."

Ron shook his head, "if we could believe that Harry would murder an innocent squib then, yeah, I think it's more believable to say that anyone else is capable of selling us out."

Neville frowned at that, but didn't contradict him. "Who was it?"

"No guesses?" Avery mocked, sweat beading his lip as he stalled for as long as he possibly could.

"Malfoy. It was Draco the whole time," Ron answered at once.

"Ron..."

"Am I right?" Ron pressed looking directly at Avery, "was it Draco Malfoy that's been working for Voldemort this whole time?"

There was a beat of silence, a hesitation that lasted just long enough for Avery to gasp, "yes," he answered. "It was Lucius' kid. And he's been under your noses the whole time! I couldn't believe that you lot never even bothered to use Veritaserum to check on him. He shows up after telling the Dark Lord that he heard Snape warning Dumbledore about the plan with Black, and you lot just...adopted him like a little lost puppy."

Veritaserum wasn't a perfect solution, every wizard knew that. It was why it wasn't used in trials except when gathering preliminary evidence, and though the results were admissible, the Wizengomot was well trained to take the results with a grain of salt. Well trained Occlumens had been known to get around the potion, there were certain antidotes that could stay in the system for up to a week without detection and, though it was extremely rare, there were some with a strong enough will who had been known to overpower the potion much like those that could fight off the Imperius Curse. It had been the reason that when Harry had claimed that he had been innocent of the charges, he hadn't been believed.

Likewise, the only real oath that was completely foolproof was the Unbreakable Vow and there were obvious problems with using that on fellow Order members. Ron might have never fully trusted Malfoy, but the others had overruled him. And it couldn't be denied that Malfoy had provided them with solid information more often than not. Assuming everything that they learned here was true, there was some small comfort in knowing that Malfoy had played his part well.

"Malfoy was the one that told Voldemort that Snape was spy? How did even know?"

Avery shrugged, "I don't know. Never cared enough to ask. Snape was a nasty bastard from the day I met him, didn't like him when I thought we were on the same side, hated him when I found out that the son of a bitch had been playing us the whole time. I do wish our Lord had given him a proper punishment the way he deserved, but using him to get to the Potter boy and leave himself his own spy was a caliber of genius only the Dark Lord could mastermind," Avery said with awe in his voice.

Ron wished that he some sort of retort in kind, but the truth of the matter was that Voldemort had covered his bases well. He had gotten rid of his main problem in a way that none of them would have expected, because Ron realized why most of them had never suspected Malfoy of lying before now. Voldemort was known for his vindictiveness and petty revenge. None of them would have ever thought for a second that he would have let a spy go without killing them, killing them slowly and in agony as an example to the others. Instead he cut out one problem to gain the advantage and it had worked.

Draco Malfoy had been sabotaging them all along. There was a small part of Ron that was grimly satisfied that he had been right to continually question the blond. To refuse to trust him even when the others had accused him of harboring schoolboy grudges. Malfoy had been a nasty git from the day Ron had met him on the train, and he was right in knowing that the other boy would not have changed.

"What do we do now?" Neville asked.

Ron looked at his watch, they had been gone for a little more than an hour and a half, he wondered if Dumbledore had woken in that time. Was Harry still at the hospital or had he already been brought back to Azkaban? And even if he was still at the hospital, how was Ron going to convince the Ministry that Harry was innocent? Associating with known Death Eaters, no matter the circumstances, was illegal.

There was no way to explain how Ron had gotten this information without first explaining his association with the Order of the Phoenix. It had taken quite a bit of fancy politicking from Dumbledore to get Harry released without revealing exactly who his Order members were. There had been no denying that it was related to Order business, that would have been an insult to Tyson's intelligence, but at the time, Dumbledore had managed to play off Ron and Hermione's involvement as a favor to him in light of their old association with Harry. It had never been a secret that the three of them had once been inseparable, and Dumbledore managed to convince the Ministry to release Harry into their custody without admitting to their participation in the vigilante group. But how could he explain conducting a long-term surveillance operation on a Death Eater without the Ministry or even his Auror Instructors being aware? He would be kicked out of the program at the very least, though he imagined that being arrested for obstructing justice was more likely.

But that wasn't what concerned him because even if he revealed his participation in the Order and the fact that he was keeping his own informant under the rather dubious use of an Unbreakable Vow, that didn't mean that Harry would go free. Any information he had gained had been done so illegally and Harry had been convicted in a court of law. Could they get him a retrial? Would the Ministry even listen to him?

He needed to talk to Hermione. He was surprised how the decision came to him like second nature, but as soon as thought of it, he knew that he was right. Hermione would know what to do and the Order needed to know that Malfoy was plotting against them all. He needed to act quickly, because if there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he wasn't going to rest until he had proven that Harry was innocent.

HPHPHP

 **90 minutes Earlier**

Draco hurried down the corridor into a private room that only contained a single witch that appeared to be currently comatose. There was one skill that he had picked up from the Order that had proven to be quite valuable. Dumbledore's little Patronus trick was exceedingly useful in passing information, and something the Dark Lord had been pleased to learn about. It turned out that Snape had been holding onto quite a bit of information that he had deemed too valuable for their Lord.

 _Order is contacting Avery now. They are going to ask him about Potter. We need to move onto the next stage of our plan or get Potter out of the way as quickly as possible._

Draco's little cobra charged out of the room with the message and Draco was confident that the Dark Lord would have his information in the next minute or so. He knew from experience that the magic involved made travel time nearly nonexistent. The others would be able to act before Weasley found out anything important and if Draco knew them well enough- and he had certainly made sure that he had- then Longbottom and the Weasel wouldn't be leaving Avery's until they had gotten the whole story.

Still, he paced around in agitation, struggling to come up with a clear plan of attack. He remembered that day back at the end of his Fifth Year, the day he had been bold enough to secure his own future. He had been humiliated to have been taken down by Potter's little gang the way that he had. Even he couldn't deny that they had beaten him soundly. He had trudged to Snape's office in a combination of anger, frustration, embarrassment and jealousy. Jealousy because Weasley and others hadn't simply escaped for their own sake, but to get to Potter. To help him do whatever mad thing he was trying to do, and Draco couldn't think of a single person that would have done the same thing for him if their positions had been reversed.

He had been prepared to complain to Snape about the Gryffindors' impromptu escape and hope that his Head of House would dock the others the remaining points left them or better still assign so many detentions that they would be set through graduation. Instead he had overheard Snape's hurried instructions to check Black and ensure that Headquarters was still safe. He had seen the delicate little doe that had reminded Draco so vividly of the stag that had chased him down as a thirteen year old when he had tried to trick Potter. He had seen Dumbledore's answering phoenix assure Snape that everything would be taken care of and not to worry but to remain at Hogwarts to best 'keep his cover intact'. And it was in that crucial moment that everything had changed. Because Draco had had _leverage_.

And so the next day, when Draco had learned that his father had been arrested and it had all been Potter's fault, he had known exactly what he had wanted from that leverage. He had promised to make Potter pay for what he had done, and Draco had kept that promise. Potter had lost everything. His freedom, his friends, his reputation as the savior of the Wizarding World and Draco knew that it would only take a little more- just one more disappointment, one more loss, and Potter would lose his sanity as well.

It had been going so well and they were so bloody close. Tyson and his cronies were blind to the vulnerabilities in their own government. The Dark Lord had spies well placed in every single department in the Ministry and once his father and the others were released from Azkaban, they would be ready for their final assault. But the Dark Lord was adamant, Potter could not be allowed to fight against them. Though Draco wouldn't admit it under pain of death, he thought the Dark Lord was giving Potter too much credit. What could he possibly do against them?

But the prophesy that Potter had destroyed was still an unknown quantity and the Dark Lord had learned from his mistakes of the past. There was no need to kill Potter as long as he was broken. He had just needed to make sure that the others were distracted enough with Potter that they wouldn't be able to stop the Dark Lord's major plans, but having Weasley finally ask Avery the right questions would ruin things.

Ever since the blood traitor had come up with his little plot, Draco had been using it to his own advantage. Warning the Dark Lord of what they would ask, ensuring that Avery was only given information that couldn't hurt them. It had been a delicate operation but ultimately it had only helped re-enforce Draco's own loyalty as he had come up with several seemingly revealing questions to ask of the other man. A few well-placed mild compulsion charms on Weasley and the redhead was subtly stirred towards staying on topics that the Dark Lord didn't care about and away from critical information such as Potter's guilt. It had been a tight-rope but Draco had mastered the skills of an acrobat. And it might now all be crashing downing around him...

Just as he was near panic, he felt his mark burn under his skin with an intensity that was beyond pain. It was anticipation, and through the burning, Draco smiled...it was time. And Potter was going to pay. In less than an hour, it wouldn't matter what Weasley found out, because chances are the Ministry was never going to allow Potter to survive.

 **A/N: Thanks once again for you all your great reviews and suggestions and a special thank you to mylittlehazmat for her fantastic editing skills.**

 **Regarding the Unbreakable Vow: the way I see it, they can't be something that are used all the time or else, why did any of the Death Eaters go free in canon? All Death Eater trials could have been quick and effective if the Ministry had just made everyone swear an Unbreakable Vow that they had never willingly served You-Know-Who. I'm sure some might just consider it a plot-hole of the series, but I prefer to think that such a Vow was reserved in the Wizarding World for only the most dire of circumstances- hence Arthur Weasleys absolutely panicked reaction when the twins tried to use one on a young Ron.**


	19. Arresting Personalities

**Chapter 19: Arresting Personality**

Severus Snape strode into the pub with the quick strides of a man with limited time. Unfortunately, this was no different than his usual stride and the man he was meeting did not immediately notice that this time it was in fact an emergency.

"Firewhiskey?" It was the usual gruffly spoken first question even though the offer was usually declined.

"Several, and you will need a few yourself when I'm done talking," Severus answered drily. Aberforth Dumbledore was not a man that was surprised easily. He had not always been a 'simple' pub owner and anyone that made the rather embarrassing mistake of thinking of him as nothing more than the famous Albus Dumbledore's wayward little brother found that they paid dearly for their misunderstanding soon enough, but he had learned over the past few years that Severus Snape was not a young man to be trifled with. The Potions Master had a varied and yet precise set of skills and one of those was a gift for underscore, and so with this ominous greeting Aberforth stiffened slightly and braced himself for more bad news. He had been getting plenty of it today.

"Back room," he grunted.

Severus nodded, and out of the corner of his eye saw Aberforth quickly settling tabs or drawing long pints so that he would have several undisturbed minutes to talk privately with Severus. From another man in a similar place, leaving the bar unattended to settle personal business might have seemed odd or even suspicious but the Hogs' Head had always had a reputation for strange and unusual business and most of the clientele were the sort of people that had conditioned themselves long ago not to look too closely at other people's affairs. Long before the Second War had started in earnest, it had not been uncommon to see Aberforth peddling in all types of magical and even muggle oddities, many illegal, others legal enough but so unusual that members of 'polite society' stayed away from them. The Hog's Head was a place where people did their business and didn't feel the need to apologize for it.

The backroom that Severus entered was already well protected against any potential eavesdroppers but that did not stop the Potions Master from raising his own _muffilto_ spell once he and Aberforth were alone.

"Heard from Amos?" Snape asked without preamble.

Aberforth nodded, "sent in his coded message. Little Tommy is moving forward with his plans like we suspected. He doesn't like that Potter is out, reckon he's worried about how much Potter knows. We know enough to know that his own network of information is probably more informed than our own, which begs the question- why haven't you worked harder to get him in with us?"

Severus was too rushed at the moment to bother looking offended when he didn't care enough for the emotion for it matter. "Potter and I have always had an acrimonious relationship at best. I made my overtures but that does not erase past history. Not the mention the fact that given his own recent experiences, trust in anyone is not something that Potter is overflowing with at the moment. He's...cautious. Smarter than he was a boy, I'll grant you that. Also, should I remind you that the boy hasn't been out of Azkaban four days at this point and those moments have not been idle to say the least. I was surprised enough that the boy was willing to even accept a limited truce with me, I have hardly had time to fully initiate him into this little...cabal that you managed to recruit me into."

Aberforth did not have the same penetrating gaze as his brother but he did have a way of cutting to the heart of a matter with merely a glance. Years of perfected Occlumency and working as a spy were the only things keeping Severus from blushing under the man's gaze now. They both knew that as much as he may grumble about the arrangement, Severus had been only too happy to be able to bring his unique skill set elsewhere once his cover with the Death Eaters had been destroyed and the sanctimonious members of the Order had all but disregarded him entirely.

Aberforth had his own way of doing things, methods that the pious _Albus_ Dumbledore would look down on, at least publicly, but Aberforth was always quick to claim as a matter of necessity in a time of war. The younger Dumbledore had always been quick to correct assumptions that his elder brother was a righteous as his reputation, but then Aberforth had never had to fight against the burden of such a reputation for himself. There were certain advantages that came with being the misfit. The rebel. The one that was constantly overlooked. And as the younger, often troublesome, nearly forgotten brother to one of the greatest wizards of the past century- Aberforth had learned them all.

Aberforth's little network of spies and, at the right moments, agents of destruction, were made up of those that were willing to go the extra step. To not simply stand against the Dark Lord but to stand against anyone or anything that threatened a clear resolution to the war. While the Order had been public in their way, they had largely stood aside when Tyson had taken power. But as Severus had told Harry, there were more than two sides to the war.

And not everyone found Ivan Tyson to be the godsend that he purported himself to be.

The addition of Amos Diggory had occurred after Potter's conviction. The man had loved his only son Cedric to distraction and his death had deeply affected the man. He had felt that Hogwarts and the Ministry had failed to protect his son and worse- actively tried to ruin his memory in the year following his death. Claiming the boy had died of a 'tragic accident' rather than attribute it to the murder that it was. Severus knew that part of it was sheer pride. In Amos' mind, nothing less than the most evil wizard would have been able to kill his beloved son and he had refused to allow anyone to take that honor from his family. The Ministry's policies had nearly driven him mad with grief and impotent anger at a source that he could not destroy.

But the man had heard about Potter, the way the boy had served numerous detentions for refusing to lie about the manner of Hufflepuff's death. The fact that the Gryffindor had risked life and limb to return the corpse of what should have been his rival in the competition to his parents. There were few people that wanted to destroy the Dark Lord _and_ see the Ministry burn as much as Amos Diggory

"Diggory was able to keep the Death Eaters away from obtaining a few of the addresses they were after, according to our last intel at least. He said he managed to destroy it two days ago when we first learned of their plans. I take it Albus and friends never saw the attack on the Ministry coming?"

Severus shook his head, "I told you that they've grown careless. Too many of them are involved personally in the Ministry and they fail to see some of the spies that are employed by Tyson. And I've never managed to satisfyingly prove it but I'm quite certain that Percy Weasley is the main culprit."

"I thought that was the one that wasn't in the Order?"

"Officially he is not but he managed to reconcile with his family some time ago and the Weasleys have never been much for...decorum in their household. They are all extremely loyal in their own way, though I imagine Potter might disagree, and yet the entire lot of them are incredibly naïve. The Weasleys really are the epitome of Gryffindor reckless foolishness wrapped up in a sentimental Hufflepuff shell- with the exception of Percival who in my own opinion only escaped being Sorted into Slytherin by some sort of genetic trigger in the Sorting Hat that streamlines all Weasleys straight to Minerva."

Aberforth's lips twitched.

"Do our other contacts think that the missing addresses will disrupt the Death Eater plans?" Severus asked.

Aberforth shook his head, "not likely at all."

"Damn it," Snape muttered. It had been a shallow dry hope- the kind he rarely had the patience, let alone the optimism, to entertain- but had hoped that the scale of the Ministry attack meant that the plans for the Azkaban breakout had been delayed. He had tried to stop the Order from falling directly int the Dark Lord's plot but once again his opinions had been disregarded.

Aberforth's eyes narrowed, his mouth a grim line. "Let me guess, Potter already passed on the intel of the break out. Or what he knows of it."

"And the Order acted as we assumed they would. That young Auror Miller or Miles or whatever his name is, is already implanting the ambush as we speak."

"And you didn't think to stop them?"

Snape shot him a withering look, "Albus is currently unconscious and no one else is willing to take my word for it."

"I thought you made an alliance with Potter. Did he say anything about using caution? Coming from someone that they thought had been on the inside they might have actually listened."

"Potter was not in the frame of mind to help at the moment that I saw him last and though I am fairly confident he will be fully possession of his faculties once more soon enough, I did not have time to wait for him when there was a strong possibility that his opinion would also be disregarded by the rest of super friends. We need to act quickly."

Aberforth nodded grimly. "They surprised us with the Ministry, no intel we received even hinted that they would hit there before they had taken Azkaban. Counters logic- Riddle's got almost a hundred fighters there at this point according to our last count and most still under the six-month mark."

"And some of them only a few weeks in. The Order was bragging about another successful raid only days ago, hardly enough time to fully train new recruits, so what was the goal of the last attack."

"Diversion," Aberforth said smoothly. "Wanted to keep up the usual charade without a noticeable change in their pattern of behavior."

Severus shook his head, "partly that and part of it was surely an acceleration of their timetable once Potter was released but that doesn't account for fact that the Dark Lord is spreading his forces very thin indeed. Why attack the Ministry with only about half his fighters?"

"Because he has more than we think," Aberforth answered with more resignation than revelation. "Yeah that was what Amos took away from the attack as well. Death Eaters got in with minimal resistance. He reckons half the protective spells over the emergency exists and entrance toilets were entirely disengaged."

Severus nodded upset that his theory was confirmed though not particularly surprised at this point. His secondary resistance group, the people he found when he had been forced out of the Death Eaters and insulted too greatly by the Order, had proven to be a wealth of information from a strange group of resistance fighters. Generally speaking, the people who followed Aberforth were the wizards that had learned to distrust the Ministry while at the same time disagreeing with the way that Albus ran the war.

But that wasn't the main concern now. Severus and the others had been aware of a planned breakout for months now but only in the last couple of weeks had the Dark Lord's other plans become clear. It was the reason he had rushed over here. "The Aurors are going to be walking into an ambush and I'm worried that not only is Potter going to be blamed for the breakout like we thought- but now he's going to be the number one suspect for the annihilation of the Auror Department."

HPHPHP

Pansy Parkinson took a deep breath as she surrendered her wand for inspection, waiting nervously for them to give it back to her. She had just gotten word from her Master and had come at once to enact their final plans. Draco had informed them only weeks ago that that they had to move quickly once Potter had been released into Order custody, but she hadn't anticipated setting their plans into motion as swiftly as they had done the last few days. For a moment she allowed herself a rueful smile, for years she had been impatiently counting the days for this moment. Pansy had never had a particular talent for waiting. Draco often informed her it came from being the only child of a wealthy man. Or perhaps _spoiled_ child of wealthy man was a more accurate description. Martin Parkinson had taught his daughter a great many skills but managing disappointment was not among them.

She had not understood why their plans had to progress as slowly as they had these last few years. The Dark Lord should have already taken power. She and Draco and her family should have already received their reward for their loyalty and forethought. She would picture it all the time, the Manor that she would soon be entitled to own. Perhaps a brand-new Estate. She knew it wasn't the 'done' thing, that power and prestige was usually reserved for the oldest Houses but she found them old fashioned and tired and she wanted something _new_. Something to show the world that Pansy-very-soon-to-be-Malfoy if she had a say in the matter. The Dark Lord was currently occupying Malfoy Manor and she and Draco would need their own home. She could hardly wait and the fact that it had taken so long to implement these tedious, boring plans had been driving her insane.

What could they possibly have been waiting for? Tyson's little puppet government would never have managed to do a bloody thing to stop them as far as she was concerned. And Potter was out of the picture, carted off to Azkaban in a plan that she was only privy to the basic details of lest she ever be questioned. Another agent of the Dark Lord might have been insulted not to be trusted with the details of the plan, but Pansy had never concerned herself overly much with _details._ In fact she had given very little thought of the repercussions of her actions, the small ones she had been taking for the past four years and the large- irreversible- ones that she was going to take in a few minutes. She was more concentrated on the bigger picture. Victory was in sight.

The door closed and she was alone with Lucius Malfoy. This wasn't her first visit but it had been nearly a year since she had had cause to visit personally. Generally, it was Draco that managed this end of things. Lucius had started to age inelegantly, even in the months since she had last seen him. His once shiny hair was limp and dead looking. He was pale. Thin. The thought crossed her mind that the Malfoy fortune might belong to Draco a lot sooner than anyone of might have anticipated. The thought of what the money from an early inheritance could mean for a wedding excited her for a moment before she forced herself to concentrate on the present.

"Our Lord wants you to proceed within the hour."

Lucius looked unsurprised and Pansy fought to keep herself from scowling. She had always enjoyed the feeling of delivering shocking or salacious news. She had been infamous at Hogwarts for knowing the worst secrets about everyone and she had used that information quite judiciously. Pansy might have never been much for writing about the finer points of Transfiguration but knew how to spot a weak spot from a mile away.

"Ideally it would be better to wait a few more days. The word is spreading just as we planned but Potter's followers are...proving to be rather uncooperative."

Pansy rolled her eyes, "they want out just as much as the rest of you. Blaming Potter should be the least of their worries."

Pansy was rewarded for her remark with a tightening of Lucius' mouth. She knew that it galled him to be lumped together with the other prisoners, the majority of whom came from Half-Bloods or lower families. He considered himself set apart and she gloried in the fact that after being denied seeing his proper surprise at her little announcement, she could at least still get under his skin.

"I believe that you understand very little of the _dynamics_ at play here. Potter has an uncanny ability to inspire loyalty and those that are under the warped impressions that Potter has managed to help him are not simply grateful but wary of severing from a powerful ally. Even petty thugs know the dangers of switching allegiances haphazardly."

Pansy raised an eyebrow, "loyalty? From what I hear the Order and all of Potter's former little friends couldn't get rid of him fast enough. Seems that they were well shot of him."

"Yes well, you were always best at seeing all situations in the light of how they _seem_ on the surface, my dear," Lucius replied with a haughty smirk that was only diminished slightly by the drab prison uniform.

Pansy pursed her lips as she struggled not betray her true anger at Lucius' slight against her. "Well it really does come to the same thing now, doesn't it? Our Lord has demanded that the plans be set in motion within the hour and I imagine that he would be _most displeased_ if you were to fail in placing the blame at least partially on Potter's shoulders. Draco has obviously done as well as anyone could expect but the rumors in the Ministry's regarding Potter's innocence have only grown in the past year and now Potter's had days to convince them. You must realize the dangers of allowing Potter to regain the confidence of the Order?" she asked as sweetly as possible.

She had never liked Lucius. Draco was flexible and amenable to following others as long he could think that it was something that he wanted to do. It was a trait that she had always adored about him. Strong on the surface so that the world could see him as a leader, as a man should be seen, and yet simple enough to turn in the direction that she wanted to follow as her mother had taught her. Lucius was not flexible, nor was he, by nature, a follower. His service to the Dark Lord was a singular exception and selfishly driven for his own ambition. Not a man that could be easily manipulated or beaten. Even now, tired and weathered from his time in prison, there was still an ever-present gleam of the man that he had once been.

He had also never approved of her as match for Draco. He found her unintelligent, 'flighty' even. She possessed the breeding needed as a proper Pureblood wife but apparently lacked the poise, charm and calculation that he found in women like Narcissa. In the past, Lucius had implied that Draco would tire of her. The man had gone so far as to claim that even while she _knew_ that Draco was stringing the Weasley girl in the Order along for the ride, that he was doing the same to her. As if Draco would treat her the same as some insignificant Blood Traitor.

Pansy Parkinson was a woman who got what and _who_ she desired and she had decided at the age of 14 that she wanted Draco Malfoy and the title of Mrs. Malfoy. She would let nothing stand her in way. And if that meant that little Ginny Weasley had to meet an unfortunate end…well terrible things happened in war, didn't they?

Lucius only inclined his head, "and it will be done. The rumors on our end have already begun. The guards have always known that Potter is the one to watch in the training sessions. He has always refused to bow, refused to break and he is known for getting the others to admire and follow him. Since Potter's little furlough there had been a restless feeling in the air. Many think that Potter might be helping them improve things, others think that Potter abandoned them after all. And all the while my people have dropped just enough information to lead the trail back to Potter once our assault commences. I trust that our people closest the Minister have advised him as to the, ah... advantages to painting Potter as the enemy?"

Pansy smiled, "From what I understand, dear Ivan has needed very little convincing of late that Potter is a threat to him and his control over the Ministry. Our little friend has been hearing the rumors for years and those that believe that Potter is innocent? Well there is no doubt that they feel that Potter deserves recompense. There's little doubt in Ivan's mind that if Potter were to be declared innocent than Potter would soon be the natural challenger to the Ministry office. And if enough people feel that they owe Potter _and_ he actually has the power to defeat the most powerful wizard in the world? _"_

She let the question linger but they both knew the answer. It was what made the plan so foolproof. No Minister with any political acumen at all would want Harry Potter free- because the Wizarding World's most logical choice for leader was currently being held by his own government. Lucius still heard enough of the Ministry gossip to know that people were satisfied with Tyson's government but they were also still looking for an end to the war. Potter would be that answer. A child of prophesy sentenced to a terrible miscarriage of justice. A young, rather good looking, wizard that was known for bringing those closest to him under his leadership. Potter was a dream candidate and the Dark Lord had used that against Tyson in ways that the other man would never fully understand until the day his administration utterly crumpled and the man kneeled at the Dark Lord's feet begging for his life and mercy.

"I suppose you'll need these." Pansy brought out a tiny bag that she had stuffed into her brassiere. There really should be more female Aurors, if there had been any on guard duty that night, one of them might have thought to search her. Probably not though. They really did need to update their security procedures.

Lucius took the tiny bag with the undetectable extension charm full of wands. He left swiftly. No time to waste, he set to work quickly and activated the signals they had been planning for months now. Years for him. Tonight, would be last night in Azkaban. Tonight, he would drink fine Firewhiskey and make love to his wife in a bed that wasn't his own but had been waiting for him for a long time.

When the first shots were fired, he was still distributing wands, and the halls of Azkaban were lit with green.

HPHPHPHP

" _Crash!"_

Percy Weasley flinched at the sound of shattering glass as a nearly priceless vase of Eleven crystal struck the mantel of the fireplace with full force. The flinch was more for the loss of something that was probably worth more than double the amount of his entire year's salary, than for the surprise at the sudden sound. Percy was quite sure that Fred and George had immunized him against any remaining startle reflex that he might have once possessed but he still couldn't help but mourn the loss of the treasured artifact as though it had been the Burrow that had been burned to the ground. Truthfully if he would have considered loss of his childhood home less devastating occurrence overall. Eleven crystal was so valuable because it was one of the few substances that when broken were unable to fixed with magic and therefore considered nearly priceless by the larger Wizarding Community- a group of people that on the whole were not generally known to be particularly careful with their items as it was usually nearly impossible to truly destroy something by accident.

Percy scowled at the shattered crystal and couldn't help but think that it would have been better, not to mention much more practical, for the Minister to have simply chucked the highly expensive porcelain Ming Era vase that while still of refined taste, even by Wizarding standards, was still very much muggle in creation and could have been repaired in a thrice. Not that Percy would have ever dreamed of pointing these observations out to his boss.

"Potter got away from an entire _squadron_ of Aurors and now...three of them in are St. Mungo's, is _that_ what you're telling me?" Tyson shouted.

Fudge's assistant, Devin Waters, who had been sent in the former-Minister's stead in light of the utter failure of the mission, nodded nervously.

"Would someone care to explain to me how a boy that has been in prison for four years and hasn't even _taken_ a NEWT level class managed to utterly embarrass your department?" Tyson asked Rufus Scrimgeour who had been called in only moments ago to hear about the failure of his Aurors. "I was always under the impression that the Auror Department is meant to be the most elite fighting force in Britain and _twice_ today your men were caught unawares _!"_

Scrimgeour, Percy noted, glared with unusual defiance at the Minister. Ivan Tyson was considered almost universally popular for his effective policies and it was unusual for anyone to show the man open defiance but then Percy remembered that Scrimgeour had always been a bit full of himself and his own stubborn insistence that the Minister was not the best choice to lead a military campaign. Scrimgeour seemed to believe that the politics of the Wizarding World should be handled separately from the war strategy.

It seemed to Percy that the Head Auror had long ago started to overstep his bounds within the Ministry. Percy felt a surge of loyalty and anger on behalf his boss and the man that Percy considered the only thing keeping their government and people safe.

"I've made my position on the training regime very clear to you from the beginning."

"Yes, yes I've heard all the moral bleating before. I never pegged you for an emotional hand-wringer," Tyson sneered and Percy raised an eyebrow at the anger and uncensored words. He had been working directly for Ivan Tyson ever since the man had taken office at the end of 1996 and had watched him deal with several people that he disagreed with or even disapproved of, but the man had always been professional and courteous. It was clear that the events of the past few days were taking a toll on him.

" _Emotional hand-wringing_ has nothing to do it, sir. You want Enemies of the State executed, do it. You want to shoot curses as caged Death Eaters, I honestly don't give a damn but conducting full lessons in front of an known enemy- specifically an enemy that we now are very much aware at one point dueled You-Know-Who himself to a _stand-still_ at the age of 14, is pure stupidity!"

"We know nothing of the sort," Tyson hissed, face a strangle mottled red color. He took a minute to collect himself, breathing deeply before he returned to himself and with his usual, and expected, decorum added, "we know that Potter was right in saying that He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named had returned that night but that is _all_ that we know. The most logical explanation for the chain of events that followed is that is Potter decided to save his own life by joining with the Dark Lord that very night. He was then sent back both to announce the return of his new master and become a spy that no one would ever suspect. Little did his own master suspect that Potter's word would be thrown away by his formerly adoring public and therefore he was able to use Potter to lure his friends to the Ministry in return for learning the skills that Potter would use to attack his abusive relatives."

Percy nodded, that all sounded perfectly in line with everything that he knew about Potter. The fact that Ron had failed to heed Percy's advice had both angered and terrified him when he had discovered the depths of the other boy's depravity. In the intervening years relations with his family had vastly improved and he been quite gracious when both Ron and Ginny had admitted that he had been right about Harry all along. Though he had been rather put out that the twins had never officially apologized for their own mistakes. Scrimgeour, however, frowned. "I will admit that we know little of what happened with Potter but there are problems a mile long with that case. And from the rumors I've been hearing lately..."

" _Enough_ , I didn't bring you hear to talk about rumors and conjectures," Tyson cut him off quickly and Percy glanced at Scrimgeour in confusion. He had not heard any rumors about Potter or his old case and he considered himself well informed about the goings-on at the Ministry. He had several contacts both inside and outside of the higher offices and even outside of the Ministry itself. Percy didn't want to be the assistant to the Minister forever. However, the Aurors were another group entirely. Smug and often downright arrogant, they liked to keep to themselves. There seemed to be a consensus among them that all information in their department should be 'classified' from everyone else no matter how mundane or unofficial.

"I want to know about facts," Tyson continued. He glanced at Fudge's assistant, who swallowed nervously at having to be the one to deliver more bad news.

"He er...well he had help, sir. Albus Dumbledore was there. Dumbledore...well you know how he can be when he has his mind made up about something. Caused our administration all kinds of problems," Devin added. Of course, Percy knew that comparing Tyson's administration to Fudge's downfall was not the way to get on the man's good side. He himself had had to work very hard to distance himself from that whole debacle. But then Percy had always been good at identifying where to lean to in a storm. It was a skill that he felt distinguished him from his family, people that were too noble and foolishly honest to not to admit to their previous loyalties. He had often been frustrated by them but he had been gratified to discover that after their poor choices with Potter they had started to come around to his way of thinking.

"Who else was there? Who else was helping a known convicted murderer evade the Ministry?"

"Er...one of them was that Muggleborn that works in the legal department...Grainer I think her name is. Chatty. Very progressive. Not very popular as it is sir."

Percy saw the way the Minister's mouth tightened and knew that the man hated to be told incomplete intel, therefore he was only too pleased to be able to supply the information that he could. "Hermione Granger sir. Muggleborn and at one time she was Harry Potter's best friend. I would imagine that she still has some loyalty to him though quite honestly I haven't heard about the two of them being in contact prior to his release."

Tyson nodded, "anyone else?"

"Only one other sir, it was," and here the short little man flickered his eyes nervously in Percy's direction. "Well according to the Aurors present they didn't recognize her but looked to be a...a Weasley."

Percy glowered, angry that his family's trademark red hair could not for once be synonymous with success instead of embarrassment and traitors to their status and breeding. The Weasleys were every much as Pureblooded as the Malfoys or the Parkinsons and yet they had no large Manor to their name, no impressive vault in Gringotts to store their money and their heirlooms and held no real power within the Ministry that came with the prestige of having a long lineage.

Percy had tried and tried again to drag his family up from their embarrassing depths and he had thought that he was finally getting somewhere. Bill and Charlie were talking to him, letting him know the important details of the Order. Ones that weren't oathbound anyway. His parents were overjoyed to have him back round the Burrow. He had thought that they had finally learned that he had been right about these things but once again they couldn't help but be dragged into one of Dumbledore's schemes.

"Ginerva," Percy admitted reluctantly. "But sir, I can promise you with utmost sincerity that if my sister was present it was on Dumbledore's orders alone. Ginny was- _is_ I should say- disgusted by the traitor's actions and she hates him far more than any mere stranger could possibly manage. She once...fancied herself infatuated with Potter, you see. A silly schoolgirl crush, I assure you, not helped by my mother who fawned over the boy as though he were a tragic figure. But once Potter revealed himself as the- the utter _villain_ that he is, no one was more betrayed and furious than my sister. She is not against us, only confused about how best to express her loyalty."

Percy was relieved to see the Minister nod thoughtfully. The Minister was a reasonable man, surely, he would not blame a young girl for following one of the greatest wizards of the time. The Minister, after all, appreciated both loyalty and obedience and Ginny had shown both, her only mistake was in turning to the Headmaster rather than the Minister himself. A mistake that, if Percy had any say in the matter, she would not be foolish enough to make again. Percy had decided his path long ago and had rarely if ever regretted his staunch decisions. They had not always been easy to uphold and, yes in retrospect he could admit that he had been blinded by his path when he had followed _Cornelius Fudge_ and the man's utter refusal to accept the truth about the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. However, Percy remained convinced that he had not been wrong to follow the institution, it had simply been unfortunate that the institution had been mismanaged. He still believed that remaining loyal to the bedrock of their society instead of turning against it at a whim had been the right thing to do and was sure Ginny would agree once she was mad to see sense on the matter.

"You have heard from your brother...um, which one was it again?"

"Charlie sir," Percy was quick to interject, "though Bill has also given me information in the past. And yes, Dumbledore's Order is finished with Potter and I just heard that Dumbledore himself was injured in whatever plan they were trying to accomplish."

"I understand that your sister was involved in the death of an Auror...you understand what this means?" Tyson asked quietly. "Unforgivables are only excused for those that swear their loyalty to the Ministry."

"Sir, I am well aware of our policies and am certain that Ginerva will see reason. She was acting in according with the Ministry protocol and had engaged with known Death Eaters. If you've seen the report it was Potter that acted to kill the Death Eater."

Tyson nodded but there was a coldness to his expression that made Percy uneasy. He had worked his entire life towards creating a successful career and he done quite well for himself. Not quite 30 years old and already one of the highest-ranking assistants. There was already talk of grooming him for the DMLE. And yet he had never quite squashed all of his family loyalty. That was not to say he would sacrifice himself for them, but he would always consider their well-being in his decisions. Ginny in particular had always held a soft spot for him.

"I will make her see reason sir..." they were interrupted by a blaring alarm and flashing lights. The Ministry was going into lockdown and both Scrimgeour and Tyson immediately drew their wands just as another assistant from the DMLE ran into the room.

"The wards at Azkaban have breached. Reinforcements have already been sent but...but there have already been reports of casualties."

"Lock it down. Use extreme force. Any and all prisoners are subject to the Kiss on Sight order from the Dementors," Tyson barked even as Scrimgeour was casting his own Patronus to deliver a message to his own office for more back-up.

"Do we know if there was outside help?"

"Last known visitor to the prison was Pansy Parkinson."

"Arrest her. Arrest her family as well, if they know anything I want to know." The Minister barked and the assistant blinked in surprise at the order before rushing out.

"Do we know if Potter was involved in this?" Tyson asked.

Scrimgeour grimaced, "I imagine that would be quite convenient for you if he were, but if Potter wanted to escape, why do it like this? If he had organized it, wouldn't it be his goal to escape with the other prisoners? Not orchestrate a scenario in which he is temporarily released only to break the rest of the prisoners out without him. It doesn't make any sense."

"This is a boy that decided to join the ranks of a maniac that murdered his own parents. Nothing he does is rational."

"But planning of this scale requires a rational mind!" Scrimgeour argued with ill-concealed impatience.

"You're allowing your own ambition to cloud your judgement. Potter is _irrelevant_ at his point. We have a prison full of nearly 300 criminals, many of whom are known to support You-Know-Who, slaughtering our Aurors, that is the only thing we should be concerning ourselves with at the moment!"

"Rufus you and I have disagreed with Potter from the start and our opinions have only grown further apart as time has gone on. You and your Aurors have been listening to idle gossip instead of remembering that the boy had a trial. He was found guilty of using Unforgivables. He _confessed_ to having used an Unforgivable, and yet you defend him. I care little for your personal opinions on the matter, my orders stand. Harry Potter is now Undesirable Number One and excessive force is authorized in his capture."

"Sir the order to arrest Potter has already been put out..." Percy began but the look on his boss' face caused him quiet his corrections.

"Weasley, you know what we discussed and I'm officially enacting Executive Order 1025."

Percy's eyes widened slightly but he nodded. It was for the best. Potter had hurt his family. He had betrayed Ron and his parents and he had turned his back on the Wizarding World that had given the boy the world at his feet for a fluke of magic that could have easily happened to any other wizarding child. Potter had fallen into his perfect life and allowed himself to destroy the opportunities they had given him. He deserved whatever punishment they could give him. But soon, it would be over and there would be nothing left of Potter to cause anyone anymore pain.

HPHPHP

"Harry...Harry...er...I- can you hear me?" It was coming from a long way off and Harry didn't want to answer. He was tired and for the first time in a long time- _too long, he realized distantly-_ he was feeling comfortable. It had all been so hard and for now, in this moment, he didn't have to think or feel or worry. But something- no wait it was someone. _Someone_ was calling him and in a moment of terror Harry realized that not only had he lost time but for the first time the prospect of returning to reality was utterly unappealing. For so long he had fought and he had struggled and he had been utterly determined not to allow himself the weakness of anything other than sanity. But really... _why_ had he struggled? His friends had abandoned him, the world was a wreck. Maggie was dead. He would never have children, never have a family. _What the hell was he fighting for?_

The truth.

It a quiet voice, but he had listening to for the past four years and he had grown accustomed to waiting for it. No, scratch that, Harry had been listening to that tiny but utterly fearless voice his entire life. The voice that had whispered to him a child that his parents hadn't simply abandoned him or died due to their own drunken foolishness. The voice that had told him to go down through the Trapdoor First Year when his own Head of House had claimed that everything would be fine. The voice that kept his head up during Snape's insults and Malfoy's taunts and had driven him to stoically carve his own truth into the back of his hand rather than back down. Because the scar itself was not a lie- Harry didn't tell lies and he wouldn't start for Umbridge or anyone else.

But now that beaten down portion of his conscience and will, the inner mantra that should have been silenced years ago but still whispered to him when he needed it most, was telling him that the truth was close at hand. Ron would be finding out the _truth_ soon and Dumbledore might actually wake up and he might actually be free. Yes, freedom was worth fighting for. He had fought this long and he couldn't give up now, not when the Order was closer to finding out his innocence then they had ever been.

And Sophie had believed him. That was important and he shouldn't forget that. There were people that hadn't hated him, strangers that hadn't believed the very worst about him. He couldn't give up, not now, not after all this time when the end, for the very first time, might be in sight.

It was hard to focus and it took another moment for him to come fully back to himself. He had been staring at the empty seat left behind by Sophie Diggory after she had gone into an examination room with a Healer.

"Sorry, Hermione," Harry said quietly blinking as he suddenly realized that everyone else had left and it was just the two of them in the corridor. Hermione gave him a hesitant, unsure smile. "Did you hear us come up with a plan?" she asked sounding awkward.

Harry bit his lip and shifted. He was pretty certain that he had done fairly well up until now in hiding his slips from reality from the Order. He had only done it once in front them, the one in the car, but he had been hoping that Ron and Hermione might have chalked that up to him daydreaming. Or at the very worse, a side effect of having just left the prison rather than a chronic, reoccurring ailment. But now his fragility was fully on display and worse than the embarrassment of them seeing it, it was the fear of the vulnerability it revealed. He had been determined to show nothing but strength to the Order and now that illusion was utterly shattered. Dark thoughts of how they would use this apparent evidence of madness against him swirled around his mind.

He cleared his throat and failed spectacularly at his attempt for nonchalance as he said, "er sorry, no I missed it."

Hermione, quite to her credit, did not look at him with either pity or appraisal, as if she might be sizing up how best to use this weakness to her advantage, but instead only nodded as though losing track of conversation and staring off into space was completely ordinary. "Draco went to check on his own sources, he's kept in touch with a few of his Slytherin friends and sometimes he can get important information from them. Moody, Tonks and Daniel went to monitor the situation with the Aurors. Daniel is convinced that you're right about the Azkaban breakout and he wants to try and get ahead of it by bringing in extra back up. Snape was a bit upset about it actually," she confided with a roll of her eyes.

"Why was Snape upset with Myers warning the Aurors about Azkaban?" Harry asked sharply. Snape was the only person that supposedly believed him. That was interesting. By Harry's estimation Snape had a clearer idea of what Voldemort's next move would be than the rest of the Order and now that Harry no longer doubted which side the man was on, Snape's reservations worried him.

The two of them had a tenuous alliance at best, but for the time being Snape was really the only person in the Order that Harry could actually trust- and wasn't that a strange and sad state of affairs. If Harry could have gone back in time and explained how things would turn out to his eleven-year-old self, Harry was fairly certain that his younger self would have cursed him right before calling him mad.

"He reckons that if the Ministry was attacked before the prison than Voldemort's plans have changed and we might be walking into a trap. He thought that we should steer away from the prison but that's ridiculous. If there is a breakout, we need to stop it! In the last few months there have been over a hundred arrests. We can't let that many Death Eaters out into the general population, especially not if..." she cleared her throat and looked away her face flaming as though she had been adopted into the Weasley family.

"Especially not if they've been learning all of the Auror's strategies and techniques by being their personal testing dummies all this time," Harry finished for her with a matter of fact nod. "No," he agreed matter-of-factly, "we can't let that happen but if Snape says it's an ambush, he might have a point."

"If it's an ambush, we should be getting more fighters, not less. Azkaban has anti-disapparation wards as well as the tightest security in Britain. The prisoners don't even have wands! A fight there would be in _our_ favor."

"I take it that Snape lost the argument then." Not surprising. Snape had said it best himself only a couple of days earlier, that people didn't listen to unpopular men with unpopular opinions and Snape represented both. "Where did he go?" Harry asked turning his neck as though he could catch sight of him.

Hermione shrugged looking unbothered by his disappearance. "Off sulking I suppose."

Harry raised his eyebrows at her and she bristled in defense of her statement, "you know how he is better than most, Harry. Snape may be on our side, in fact I _know_ that he's on our side, but that doesn't make him any more pleasant to be around. Snape was _awful_ to us in school and he hasn't improved now that we've graduated. Just because we work together against Voldemort doesn't meant that..."

Harry nodded, "fighting a war together doesn't mean you have to like each other. I understand. But that also doesn't mean that you should disregard his advice just because it's inconvenient and not what you want to hear."

Hermione shot him a look of surprise and Harry shifted uncomfortably, "what?"

"I feel like we've switched places, I used to be the one telling you to give Snape a chance."

Harry shrugged slightly but didn't bother to list the reasons why his perspective on a lot of things had changed, including the idea that there was a lot less merit in believing in someone simply because you liked them than he used to think. "So, what are you supposed to be doing while everyone else if off doing all these tasks?"

"Oh I'm...well that is to say..."

"Put on babysitting duty, right," Harry filled in, wondering why the answer hadn't be obvious to him from the start.

Hermione gave him a swift smile and a shrug that seemed to resemble a nod of assent if a rather embarrassed one. "Your words, not mine."

Harry nodded and looked around, searching for conversation after that rather awkward pause. It was always strange talking with Ron and Hermione, more so than any of the others because in spite of all that had happened, all three of them had the most bizarre habit of falling back into their old patterns. For five years Harry had spent every day possible with his two best friends and aside from a few hiccups along the way- the distance he had put between himself and Hermione after she had had McGonagall confiscate his broomstick and when Ron had been off being a jealous little prat- the very best memories of his life, aside from the time that he had spent with Maggie, all included the two of them in it. He wondered if they felt the same way. He wondered if they too felt the mixture of anger and resentment that was confusingly mixed into with nostalgia and even... comfort in seeing them again. The rational side of him doubted it...but sometimes they would say something and Harry wasn't so sure that their own feelings weren't any less complicated than his own.

But after a moment of his own agonized thoughts he realized that Hermione was thinking about something far more specific than her own feelings. She was looking at him more critically now and he suddenly realized that even after all this time, he still recognized the way she was shifting her weight uneasily from side to side. Hermione had figured something important out and it was driving her mad not to say exactly what she knew.

"You know Hermione, back when we were in school I always hated it even more when you would do that tiny little head-shake thing that you did when someone got a question wrong than when you waved your hand around, even when the professor had made it clear that they weren't going to call on you," he told her idly.

Hermione looked at him in surprise. "That's been bothering you so much that you had to let me know even after all this time?" she asked, hurt more prominent in her voice than sarcasm.

"If you have a question just ask me."

"Maggie Clark...she was your girlfriend, wasn't she?" Never let be said that Hermione Granger minced her words.

Before he could consciously stop himself, Harry's eyes flickered to the empty seat that had been vacated by Sophie, denials and excuses ran through his head, but he knew that there was no point in really denying it. The secret that he had tried desperately to keep hadn't remained a secret at all and there was no one left to be hurt by others knowing. He let out a long breath and closed his eyes. "If there was any way that this information could still hurt her, I wouldn't admit it under torture, but...yes. I was her boyfriend."

Hermione gave a quiet nod; she was calm and poised and gave every indication of being respectful of his loss but Harry could see that old excitement over having gotten an answer that no one else could get was present in her. He could see it, lurking behind her expression and in the tight coil of her muscles as she tried to appear as cool as possible. On another person it might have meant that they were cold or unfeeling about what that kind of statement meant to him but Harry knew that Hermione's excitement over her correct deduction was not mutually exclusive from her sympathy for his pain. The fact that he could still recognize a trait like that in her brought forth a rather strange well of affection for the girl that he had once known. The girl with all the answers. He hadn't noticed until that very moment that somewhere along the way, perhaps since his owns conviction, she had lost that sense of confidence and assurance that came with her own intelligence.

Hermione nodded once again, "I thought so. Daniel told us her relationship was complicated, so complicated that it would have been impossible for her to marry her partner. He seems to have so much trust in you but is dodgy about saying why. Both of you get a bit strange if children are mentioned and then..."

Harry couldn't help the snort of amusement that escaped him. "It's a damn shame that you never had any interest in law enforcement Hermione, you would have made a great Auror with those type of detective skills. Well, aside from blatant disregard for human rights you would have to participate in, of course."

Hermione frowned, but Harry wasn't sure which part of his statement she was responding to. "I think most jobs require people to put reasoning together in a sound way. I never had any interest in being an Auror, but if they weren't so corrupt, I always thought you would have been brilliant at that job."

Harry had nothing to say in response. It was the first compliment that she had paid him in four years but he was not foolish enough to think that it was not a segue into a greater insult or condemnation of his character. He swallowed and waited for Hermione to tell him that he had been selfish. That he never should have gotten himself involved with Maggie and that she was yet another death on his already worthless conscience. He wondered if, unlike the other deaths, he even had a right to defend himself against this newest charge. She would be right of course. Harry never should have gotten himself involved with Maggie. Theirs was not some shockingly tragic tale that had been sadly unavoidable. Any idiot could have predicted that it would end badly. Daniel had known, hell the _two of them_ had known, and yet Harry had been too selfish to do anything to stop it.

Instead Hermione's voice was quiet and painfully kind as she told him, "I'm very sorry about what happened...I don't know all the details or anything but...well I heard that she was a lovely person and it must have been awful for you to lose her."

Harry's eyebrows shot up in surprise and Hermione frowned at his surprise before true pity entered her expression. "Harry, I know...I know things are different that we're not...we not friends anymore but I would never wish something so terrible on you..."

Harry raised an eyebrow at her, "I imagine that you and I have two different ideas of terrible if you don't consider Azkaban fits the bill."

Hermione winced and for the first-time actual guilt entered her expression, "I had _no idea_ that the Aurors were treating the prisoners like that. Harry...I would never have wanted that for anyone," she cleared her throat and looked away for a moment before saying quietly, "especially you. And I'm sorry...I'm honestly, truly am so sorry. I should have come and visited you. You were right about that. If it had been us...me or Ron...you would have been there."

Harry felt a flush of warmth at the apology that he had waited to hear for so long, quickly followed by anger. Anger at her and anger at _himself_ for the involuntary reaction her words had given him. He was so pathetically weak to be happy with a weak little apology after _four years_ of abandonment and pain and he refused to allow himself that weakness. She had hurt him; she had betrayed him and he was not about to let that go without her having earned the forgiveness he was uncertain he would give. Uncertain that he was even capable of fully giving her forgiveness even if he had wanted to.

"Then why didn't you visit? _Four years_ , after everything we went through together, I would have..." Harry took a shuddering breath, "even if you thought I was guilty, didn't you ever want to know why?"

Hermione opened her mouth before closing it. There was a look of rather hopeless confusion on her face that Harry could not remember ever seeing before. "You know the worst part of it is that I don't even have a good reason? I mean...I thought I did. I thought- I honestly thought that you had made your choices and I had made mine and that was that. After we found out about your relatives... the horrible things they did to you, I didn't think I needed to know why. The reasons were obvious, they were even understandable but Harry...that poor squib?" Hermione shook her head.

She drew a deep breath and blinked away a few tears in her eyes before she continued speaking. "What you had done...what they _said_ that you did...it wasn't the friend I had I had known for five years. I knew you hated the Dursleys but I never imagined it was a bad as that. And that meant I didn't really know you, did I?

"The friend that I thought that you were didn't exist. And then there was the fact that I felt...guilty. There are secrets you don't keep. Ron was right about that Harry. We should have said something, _done_ something to get you out of there. But...well admitting that made me, made all of us really, guilty for what you had turned into. All of us failed you Harry. Dumbledore, the Weasleys...perhaps Remus most of all I think that's why he's the angriest at you, because a lot of that anger is at himself because he never helped you. You're his best friend's son and he failed Sirius by not making sure he was guilty but he failed you by never even checking to see if you were alright. We never checked on you. Never made sure you were safe."

Harry's jaw clenched and the anger swelled in him. "So you all felt so awful for leaving an orphan with their abusive relatives that you just ran and hid away from it?" Harry shook his head and let out a rather sardonic laugh. "You know…its actually amazing that there are some pieces of your childhood that you cling to no matter how much evidence there is against it. Because no matter how angry I was, no matter how hurt I was that you all tossed me aside- I still thought of you as the good guys. I still considered you Gryffindors. So much for bravery."

Hermione had real tears pouring down her face. "You're right Harry. You were always the bravest of us. You would have done the right thing…I truly believe that. I don't…I have a good reason for not coming to see you. All I can say is that I made excuse. I like I couldn't come and see you because I was at school and McGonagall would never allow it, even though I never asked her. And then I was busy at home with my parents or too much time had passed or you wouldn't want to see me anyway. And then more time would pass and every once in a while..."

"What?" Harry asked her surprised to find that he wasn't as angry at her response as he had expected. Perhaps because she wasn't making excuses but instead honestly taking responsibility for her actions. He hadn't really expected her to acknowledge that she had been wrong not to see him and it left him feeling confused and uncertain. There was anger but underneath there was also…regret. Sadness at the direction life had pulled them all.

Hermione shook her head, "it's not fair to say this to you because it makes it sound like I knew something and the real problem was that I _didn't_. I...I've never been very good at things I don't understand, Harry. Its why I made sure to study all my textbooks before class so that I would be sure to know the theory so I wouldn't mess up on a new spell. It's one of the reasons I hate flying, not something you can study and learn before actually doing it. I hate not understanding things Harry and I _never_ really understood any of this.

"But every once in a while, I would think that you really were innocent after all. And that this terrible mistake had been made...only it wasn't just a mistake that the Ministry had made or even the professors had made, _I_ made it Harry. I didn't believe you and I was so...so scared that I would find out that I was wrong and I just couldn't bear the thought of that. Not when I knew that for the others...for Ron and Neville and Ginny, the really only believed that you were guilty when I believed it. They trusted me even more than the Ministry and…and I just couldn't be wrong about you. I just couldn't be responsible for that kind of mistake," she whispered, her tone utterly heartbroken with her confession.

Harry was quiet for a moment, taking in everything that she was saying and even more all that she wasn't quite saying because it sounded like Hermione might be thinking those thoughts now. It sounded like Hermione might truly believe him, but he couldn't let himself think that. Not now, not before there was solid proof and a way for Harry not to feel that awful bitter taste of disappointment all over again. He couldn't bear to even consider the idea that she might tell him that she believed him only for her might change her mind again before she was given real proof.

Hermione had never been one to work off faith alone. As familiar as the feeling of disappointment had become to him, it never stopped being painful. One did not become immune to the feel of a knife just because they had been stabbed before.

His initial reaction was to feel that her reasons were ridiculous. Made worse because they were selfish and spiteful rather than just ignorant and utterly naive. As much as she claimed that she was taking responsibility, she was still making excuses, blaming others for her decisions. Was Harry meant to feel sorry for Hermione because she still couldn't admit to being wrong?

And then Harry remembered a 14-year-old Hermione shaking and terrified of a Boggart that had not been the memory of a tortured mother's cries for mercy or the fear of an impending death. Hermione's boggart had not resembled any of the scary mythological creatures that their classmates had shared nor had it been of death or pain that Mrs. Weasley or he had once felt- it had been of failure. And while Harry himself could not fully understand such a fear; he knew that that did not make any less potent than his own terrors.

But then that had not been the most salient point that Hermione had made and it took Harry a moment himself to unwrap what she might be saying. "You said...you said that you didn't believe that I could be innocent, does that mean that you've changed your mind?"

Hermione was quiet for a minute and when she spoke it was calm and logical but with none of her usual excitement for putting the pieces of a puzzle together. Harry had once considered Hermione both the smartest and most organized person that he knew but he had never seen her so methodical as she was now.

"When the Ministry questioned me about everything and they laid out the facts, I couldn't see any possible way to explain everything that happened without you cooperating with the Death Eaters. Even if someone else had managed to use your wand, even if they had managed to swap you with someone else, use Polyjuice Potion and then swap you back again while you were in a secure Ministry holding cell- how did they get past the Blood Wards in the first place? How could anyone else have given away the secret of Snape spying to the Order while you're found with a Dark Mark on your arm? Separately those things might have been able to be explained, but all together? It just seemed to be..."

"Occam's Razor."

Hermione looked up at him with surprise. Harry gave her a wry smile, "it means that the simplest answer is usually the best answer. With that much evidence it was more likely that I was guilty than have a convoluted explanation for why I would be innocent."

"I- I know what it means, I just didn't think that..." Hermione blushed.

"Prison education, self-motivation is key but you'd be surprised with the results. Of course there's not a lot of other stimulation so perhaps it's not that surprising after all," Harry couldn't help but tease a bit.

Hermione looked unsure if she should laugh or not but settled on going right back to their conversation. "I should have talked to you. Ron and I- we owed you that much. Even if no one else did...even if it didn't even change anything, we should have talked to you."

Harry nodded but couldn't say anything else at the moment. Hermione was quiet herself before she started to speak, seemingly thinking aloud as she said. "The Chief Auror said that you're the only prisoner that never confessed, even after everything that they did to you. You never stop insulting Voldemort, you've helped us more than you strictly needed to. When we were all fighting you didn't use any Dark Arts and when you could have gotten Kreacher to take you anywhere...you came back here. Why?"

"Well on that score, Kreacher apparated me here before I even got the chance to say anything."

"But you walked back this way, you could have told him to take you somewhere else. You could have run with your wand and it would have been hard to track you down. You and I both know that you have a lot of magic at your disposal."

"And have the Order and the Ministry hunt me down? I have magic but I don't know how to Apparate. I don't know how to conjure or ward. And I have no way of getting more money without alerting the Goblins. Its not that it didn't cross my mind, it…wasn't worth it." Or at least it hadn't worth it yet. Harry had still been banking on Dumbledore's deal at that point, just as he right now he was certain that Ron and Neville were learning the truth from Avery as they spoke.

Hermione was still and it took a moment of visual reluctance before she poised the simple question, "did you do it?"

Harry raised his eyebrows at the straightforward approach. After all this time it had been the last thing he had ever expected from her but at the same time he also couldn't help but respect the sheer Gryffindor-esque simplicity, so unlike Hermione's very Ravenclaw-driven analytical mind. Occam's Razor indeed.

"No." He answered her just as simply. "I never joined Voldemort or tortured the Dursleys and I would have died myself before I killed a defenseless woman that stood up for me in court when she didn't have to."

Hermione's face was pale and her hands trembled slightly at her sides as she said softly, "I think..." she paused and steeled herself to make the definitive statement, "I believe you."

Time seemed to stand still in that moment. Those words, words that Harry had been dreaming of hearing for four years, words that he had never thought that he would hear willingly spoken without substantial proof, hung between them. Hermione was still crying, her face blotchy and her breath coming in sharp gasps now, as if she had just come to realize the sheer enormity of her statement.

" _Expellerimus!_ " Harry spun around even as his wand was ripped from his loose grip.

"What…" Hermione choked out, "no…"

"Harry Potter you are under arrest for attacking Ministry officials, conspiracy to break unknown convicts and Enemies of the State out of Prison and violating strict parole guidelines!" a powerful voice called out. It was an Auror that he didn't know but he was accompanied by two people that he knew very well indeed. Draco Malfoy was standing next to the powerful Auror with a smirk on his face. Remus Lupin stood beside him, his face a mask of anger and righteous indignation.

"I actually thought that I might be wrong about you. That there was hint of redemption in you but I know what you did Potter!"

"What the bloody hell did I supposedly do now? I've standing in bloody corridor!" Harry shouted out even as two Aurors twisted his arms behind, using magic suppressing cuffs that cut through his magic like a knife. He grunted with pain. It had only been a few hours since he had had the cuffs renewed but somehow he had already managed to forget the pain they caused.

"You attacked an Auror! You got another innocent woman killed while you saved a Death Eater!"

"No Remus you don't understand!" Hermione cried.

"I understand perfectly Hermione. I understand that Potter was using all of us. Praying on her sympathies and our...our loyalties to good people. Your parents, Sirius- they would be ashamed of the man you've become!"

"At least I never became like you," Harry spat at him. "A coward who ran out on his family. A man who makes excuses of what he can and can't do in the world. A man that blames everyone but himself for the way the world is."

Despite being held by the Aurors with his hands in restraints, Remus punched him hard in the face, Harry's jaw popped and as he spat blood he wondered if it might be broken. Werewolf strength was not a myth.

"Fine example of a man, right Lupin. You and my uncle would have gotten along quite well." He could see the words had hit there mark when Lupin's face paled slightly at the comparison but the man's eyes were still dark with rage.

"Good thing you got to him now," the Auror on the left jeered. "Potter won't be able to pain for too much longer."

"Wait, what are you talking about! You _must_ listen to me, there is a big mistake. If we can go back to the Ministry I can explain what happened with Auror Merryweather," Hermione tried.

"Nothing left to discuss ma'am. Minister Tyson has already signed an Executive Order 1095. Potter is officially getting the Dementor's Kiss. It's going to be public," the man added with relish in his voice.

 **A/N: I'm very, very sorry for the long break in between chapters. I wish I had better excuses but its been a busy time and quite frankly until now I was never satisfied with what I had written for this chapter. I hope the finished version is worth the wait. Thank you so much to the people that have continued to review and even PM asking for updates, its incredibly gratifying to find out that people actually like this story.**


	20. Retribution

**Chapter 20: The Reckoning**

Ron didn't waste any more time than he already had, after all, he had already waited long enough. Four years! Four years he could have investigated and looked for answers and tried to help Harry, the best friend he had ever had, and he had done _nothing._ The shame rose up in him in the form of actual bile, but he swallowed harshly. He could punish himself later but right now he didn't have time for self-pity or even remorse. He needed to act. _Now_.

He quickly disarmed an unprepared Avery and took out the magic suppressing cuffs that he had on him, using them to bind the Death Eater, before preparing to transport him.

"Hey, hang on a minute here! We have a deal!" Avery shouted indignantly, using his body to struggle in the absence of his wand.

"And now I'm breaking it. A bloody year I've supposedly been getting information from you and not one bloody time do you tell me that Harry is innocent! You're going to tell the Ministry _everything_ and Harry is going to go free and you can get tortured in Azkaban in his place!" he spat. Neville was pale but his expression was resolute.

"Neville, I need you to take him to the Ministry. I'm going to get Hermione, she works in the legal department of the DMLE, she'll have a better idea of what to do."

"What do I say about him? How do I explain that Charles Avery is suddenly confessing to being a Death Eater and framing the savior of the Wizarding World?"

Ron had to stop himself from making a wry comment about Neville's quick change from a cold and distant address of 'Potter' to 'savior of the Wizarding World' once more.

"You don't have to say anything yet. He can't be questioned until he's processed or charged so just make sure you delay that until Hermione gets there. She'll know best what to do." It was an old habit, but one that felt so natural that it was as though no time had passed at all. He and Hermione were not the friends they had once been but there had never been a time when Ron had not assumed she would have the right answer to a problem.

Neville nodded and grabbed ahold of Avery, who was struggling against the cuffs. "Are you alright to side-along apparate him?" Ron asked. Side-along apparation was harder than most realized. There were quite a few wizards that were never fully able to pass their Apparation License at all, but to bring another person along, especially a prisoner that was struggling, required not only single-minded focus on the destination but a boost of magical power.

Muggleborns often assumed that parents side-apparated their children all the time but even Pureblood children usually never once experienced the feeling of compression that accompanied apparation until they were ready to learn it themselves since it was not only dangerous for their parents to attempt it with another person, but could be dangerous for bodies that were too young to withstand the magical pressure.

Neville nodded, taking a deep breath. "I've done it once before; I can do it. Hurry back, though," he added before twisting on the spot. Ron quickly followed, arriving just outside the entrance of the wizarding hospital.

He ran through the halls, hoping that Hermione had not left.

As he rounded the corner, he saw her standing beside Remus Lupin and looking utterly distraught as tears poured down her face. He saw Remus shake his head, looking angry and Hermione shaking her own head in response before he could hear what was happening.

"You don't understand Remus! Harry was trying to _stop_ Ginny from killing someone. He had no way of knowing that the curse was going to hit an Auror. It was an _accident_ on his part. If anyone is responsible, it would be Ginny."

"Hermione…I know you don't like the idea of using lethal force, but this is war. The time for stunning and disarming- it's past. I know that sounds cruel, but it's us or them. Harry…he is not one of us."

"Yes, he is!" Ron gasped out of breath.

"Ron!" Hermione screamed out in surprise. "What…are you alright? You look white as sheet!"

"I should be asking you the same question, Hermione, you look a wreck!"

Hermione's face flushed slightly, and Ron wanted to kick himself. He always had a way of sticking his foot in his mouth in even the most desperate of times. "I meant that you look upset, what happened? Is it Dumbledore? Did something happen?"

"No, we haven't heard anything since Snape gave us the last update. It's Harry, they arrested him, Ron! They are charging him with the murder of the Auror outside of the cave, but he wasn't responsible for that!"

"He wasn't responsible for anything!" Ron responded heavily. "It was all…we were wrong."

"What are you talking about?" Remus asked harshly. "We know what happened. There was a trial!"

"A trial where we never even heard Harry defend himself!" Hermione shouted back. Ron looked at her in surprise. He had thought that he would need to work to convince her, but once again Hermione was a step ahead of him. She must have caught his look of surprise because she shrugged somewhat defensively. "I know what we all thought but I must not have been the only one to notice that Harry…he's not like the Death Eaters that we catch! He's not afraid of saying the name Voldemort, he doesn't disparage Muggleborns or talk about how great things under the 'Dark Lord' would be. He has never once confessed to any of the crimes he was accused of, even after the Aurors have used him as some sort of torture…puppet! It doesn't make sense," she insisted.

"Potter is smarter than we gave him credit for," Lupin insisted. "We all know that he can be stubborn."

"Hermione's right," Ron said, cutting off Hermione's rebuttal. "And Harry is stubborn as hell, but he's not a Death Eater. He was on our side the whole time." Ron winced; well, correction- Harry was against Voldemort the whole time, that didn't make him on _their_ side. But that was their own fault. They had pushed and insulted and torn down the boy that Harry had been. They didn't deserve Harry on their side.

Hermione blinked at him before her expression turned rather eager. "What did you find out?"

"Avery told us everything. Under the vow, so we know it's true. It was V-Voldemort that set him up. Used Polyjuice, stole his wand, even paid off his uncle to drag him out of the house after beating the living shit out of him for good measure. It was all a ploy…and we fell for it."

Despite her earlier assertions, Hermione turned pale and Ron knew that as much as she had wanted to believe her own speculations, it was different from hearing the truth and knowing it as fact. Remus on the other hand was shaking his head.

"It's impossible…"

"No, its not. Think about it, Voldemort never could manage to kill Harry, and Harry said that when Voldemort possessed him the Department of Mysteries, it hurt worse than the Cruciatus. Imagine for a minute how much it must have hurt Voldemort when Harry _kicked him out_?" Ron asked.

Hermione was nodding along, "Of course. He couldn't beat Harry, but he couldn't let him live. Everyone would know that he had been beaten by a teenager, he would never be able to win with Harry in the Order, so instead he got him out of the way. And we fell for it," she added with a grimace of pain.

Remus, however, was still in the grips of denial. "The Minister…the top specialists at St. Mungo's and every expert we could find in Mind Magic agreed that the connection that Harry and Voldemort supposedly had couldn't possibly exist. It wasn't _real_ , it was an excuse. A lie that Harry created so that we would believe him…or at best possibly a delusion that he created to feel closer to his master and give himself an excuse for his actions. It wasn't _real_."

Hermione, though, had been convinced. "Of course, it was real," she snapped angrily. "That part always bothered me. There were too many things that Harry knew that he _couldn't possibly_ know without that connection. He had sent Sirius a letter the summer before Fourth Year about a dream that he had had of Voldemort. Why would he do that? How could have possibly known to set up a fake connection like that a year before Voldemort even returned? And before you try and claim that Harry really is this master manipulator and was already working for Voldemort, why send the letter to Sirius? Why not Dumbledore? Or the Weasleys? Even McGonagall was in a better position to do something about a possible link to Voldemort's thoughts than an escaped convict. Harry even tried to convince Sirius it wasn't real once he found out that he was coming back to England to support Harry. It's too convoluted to be a lie.

"And Remus…you didn't see Harry when he had that vision during the OWL exams. I don't care how good an actor you think he is, no one could fake that kind of panic. Harry was convinced that Sirius was in danger; no matter what I thought might have happened after that, I never doubted that Harry really did want to save Sirius."

"You didn't see him the night my dad was bitten by that snake. He was…even if he had taken potions to fake being ill…his _eyes_ , Remus," Ron added quietly.

"We…we don't know how far back Harry's cooperation went…" Remus answered but the protestation was weak.

"Harry's scar burned even in First Year and he couldn't have been working for Voldemort back then. He stopped Voldemort from getting the Stone, we _know_ that much. No one has ever survived the Killing Curse before Remus, how the hell would anyone know what to expect to happen with someone that did?" Ron asked bleakly.

"What are you we going to do now?" Hermione asked Ron, turning away from Remus before he could formulate any further rebuttal.

"I have Neville watching Avery. I'm going to have him confess everything to the Aurors, but if they have Harry in custody then we need to move fast. I don't want Harry to be sent back to Azkaban again for something he didn't do," Ron explained.

Hermione shook her head, her expression worried, "its worse than that Ron, Harry isn't just going back to Azkaban, the Minister put out an order for him to be given the Dementor's Kiss!"

Ron felt his knees shudder as though he was going to collapse but he collected himself. He had failed Harry for the past four years, and he would be damned if he failed him again. Ron didn't care what it took, he was going to get his best friend back no matter what it took.

"Hermione, we need to go, now. I'll go to the Auror Department and you need to get in touch with everyone you know at the DMLE, we can't let them Kiss Harry without hearing the whole truth!" Hermione nodded and was already moving to the exit so that she could apparate back to the Ministry. They needed to move quickly but by the end of the day, Harry would be free and Ron knew that he would spend the rest of his life if he had to proving that he worthy of a second chance at their friendship. He could only hope that Harry would offer him the forgiveness that he knew he had no right to ask for.

HPHPHP

When Harry was finally left alone in the Ministry holding cell, he did something that he hadn't done in a very long time. It had been months, probably; though in truth he couldn't quite remember how long it had been but he knew the last time had been with Maggie. Though, he wasn't sure if he had ever done it so loud or for so long in his entire life, but now seemed to be a good as time as any.

He laughed.

He laughed until he was doubled over in pain and tears rolled down his cheeks and he could scarcely gasp for breath. He laughed because his life was truly cursed. Hermione believed him, surely at this point Ron had discovered the truth and after all this time and everything he had fought for with tooth and nail- _it didn't bloody matter_.

 _Every time_ he got close to the end, there was another trial in his way. Another reminder that there were no happy endings to this story. Snape had believed him, but no one would believe Snape. He had gotten Dumbledore to swear an oath to help him and the man was unconscious. Now the two people that Harry had once been the closest to in the whole world, the two people that when he had first been sentenced, it had hurt to the most to be separated from, had finally unearthed the truth and it was _too bloody late_.

Harry had once believed that the Wizarding World would be his salvation from the drudgery of his life at the Dursleys and yet somehow, it had turned into a nightmare. He had never wanted the fame, never needed to be their hero but even after all these years he had never quite managed to wrap his head around why it was that the world at large demanded he either be their hero or their enemy with no middle ground at all.

And now the nightmare was coming to the worst possible conclusion.

Ever since the train ride to Hogwarts for the start of his Third Year, Harry had hated Dementors. They were vile, the most horrible beings he could conceive of in the world. The coldness, the misery, the memories of pain and loss that consumed you- even after all this time and all he had seen they remained his deepest fear. But how he felt about them in general was nothing compared to the sheer terror and utter revulsion that he felt about the Dementor's Kiss. The idea of his very soul being taken from him succeeded in gripping him with a paralyzing fear that the Aurors that tortured him or Voldemort himself had never managed to accomplish.

Harry felt that the very worst thing about the Dementor's Kiss was that you were never at peace. He wasn't afraid of death. All things considered in his life, death would be a reprieve from the torture he had experienced in Azkaban. Harry had never been a religious person, the Dursleys were the type to go to the Holiday Church service because it was expected, not because of any deep personal faith, and Harry had never had reason to believe that any higher deity was looking out for his particular interests.

However, he had never been able to shake a deep conviction that there had to be some sort of an afterlife. A place where he would be free of pain and unasked-for responsibilities and the stigma of the entire Wizarding World alternately celebrating his unwanted fame or condemning him for crimes he hadn't committed. And best of all, it would be a place where he would see his parents and Sirius again. No, Harry didn't mind dying, but he had always been terrified of the Dementor's Kiss; his soul would be forever trapped, never permitted that final escape. However, he had once spoken to Felix of his fears and the older, much wiser, man had been able to grant him the most elusive of human emotions in the dark confines of the prison: hope.

Felix had told him that studies had been conducted in the Department of Mysteries and there was a general consensus- far from certainty, but by no means idle speculation- that the souls did not remain forever trapped inside the confines of a Dementor. Instead the soul was consumed and…digested for lack of a better term. It took time, far more than a simple death would have granted the soul, but the soul eventually passed on. And it was this thought that Harry clung to with a desperation of a drowning man. He had learned the art of hard-won patience, he could wait for his soul to be at peace, but he refused to believe that he would not be rewarded for all his intentions in the end. Wizards could be hateful, they could spiteful and unfair, but Harry could not believe that the universe itself was such a cold unforgiving place that your actions and deeds meant nothing.

 _There is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it._ That was Voldemort's belief and one that he used to indoctrinate his followers, but Harry had always had the conviction that it was wrong. There was such a thing as good and evil in the world and it had been this belief that had sustained and pushed him for so long.

Perhaps these were all stupid thoughts, all things considered in his life, but Hope was a precious and fragile commodity and Harry only had so much to spare for himself. Tyson was going to win, and as Harry's hysterical and manic laughter finally died from his lips, he knew that he had to come to terms with that fact.

He was going to die.

He could still remember Maggie's words as she came to confess that she was dying ' _One day…_ _you_ _are going to be the one to stop Voldemort and I think you know that much but listen to me, you are going to do so much more than that. You are going to get rid of people like Tyson and any other corrupt Minister. You're going to save us all Harry, and I will be so proud of you._ '

These were his last remaining hours and now that the initial panic and adrenaline had faded a bit, Harry had a moment of clarity. It was a strange feeling, almost supernatural in quality. Harry couldn't say why it was that this suddenly understanding came to him now but he had survived enough of his life with going on instinct and he wasn't about to stop now.

Harry had never considered him a man with a particularly large ego, in spite of how many others saw him. He had never cared about fancy clothes or others means of showing off his wealth- not that he had ever had much opportunity. He had never wanted fame. Never cared about getting the best grades or being the most popular bloke in school. But he had wanted his life to matter. He had wanted to bring justice to those that had deserved it and it was with a certain delicious sense of triumph that he knew that when his soul left his body, a piece of Voldemort's soul would be consumed as well. Consumed and _destroyed_. Because with as much certainty as he had that one day he would finally find peace, he knew that death would find Voldemort- and for him, at least, it was certain to be as horrifying as the man had always feared.

Harry took a deep breath. They had told him that the Kiss would be performed the next day at sunset in the large atrium of Ministry of Magic. It was already late at night which left him with less than 24 hours. Less than one day to try and pull off a plan that he had no way of knowing would work. As far as he knew, no one else had ever tried to use magic in the way he was about to attempt. He wouldn't have a wand and Harry had never made it far enough at Hogwarts to learn even non-verbal casting, to say nothing of wandless casting, which was extremely limited. But there was something to be said for pure desperation. This would be his last conscious act of his life, the last opportunity that he would be able to use his magic or even make a decision for himself and it was this thought that he grasped onto. Accidental magic in children was fueled by strong emotion; well, Harry could honestly say that nothing in his life seemed more important than this final last-ditch attempt at some small piece of retribution.

Harry Potter was prepared to die, but that didn't mean that he would go quietly into the night, it didn't mean that he was above taking his enemies down with him as best he could. He only wished that of all the lessons that he had learned from Felix, he had paid a bit more attention to his lecture on the _geas._ It seemed as though once again Harry was going to figure things out as they came about.

HPHPHP

"What the bloody hell do you mean you can't do anything!" Ron shouted in desperation.

Between the two of them, he and Hermione had been through every department they could think of. Hermione had first gone directly to the DMLE. He had only caught the tail end of the discussion as he had been coming from his own failed conversation with the Auror's office, but he knew that Hermione had been greatly upset by the conversation she had had with her superior. It had ended badly, Hermione had been in tears and there had been an air of someone that had just experienced deep-seated betrayal when she had emerged from Thurston Grey's not-quite-modest office. Ron had felt the need to comfort her in some way but there had been no time.

They headed back to Grimmauld Place in the hopes of getting support from the Order in convincing the Ministry to re-open the investigation before implementing the Kiss only to find that support there had been slim to none. Ron was unsurprised to see that Malfoy had scarpered for the moment. Just as well for the time being, if the git had been there Ron would have cursed the bloody ferret into next week and he didn't have the time. What was more frustrating was that Ginny had seemingly gone with him. The Aurors were all busy still trying to hunt down the escaped prisoners or containing the damage as much as possible. More surprising was the news that Snape had not been seen again after being at the hospital. Charlie informed them that they were getting more than a few strange reports back about tripped wards and surges of magical output in seemingly random locations. However, with limited people and no one that held any real power, the only thing the trip accomplished at all was a sick feeling in Ron's gut as Teddy and Auggie badgered him immediately upon his arrival as to when Harry would be back. No one seemed willing to tell the kids that they were unlikely to see Harry again.

After the disappointment of the Order, they had both gone to see the Minister's secretary, then to the very _Head_ of the DMLE and now both of them were together back once again at the Auror's office, this time in front of the man that would one day be Ron's boss.

Well…perhaps. The way things were going, Ron's chances of passing Auror's training were declining at an almost alarmingly rate. He very much doubted that dressing down the commanding officer was a good way to ingratiate himself.

"Weasley, I would watch you tone right quick," Chief Auror Scrimgeour snapped. "We follow orders. That's our job. Whether you like it or not, Tyson is our Minister and his orders are clear, the arrest order stands and in…" Scrimgeour glanced down at his pocket watch, "five hours Potter is going to receive the Dementor's Kiss."

"He's innocent! That's what I've been trying to explain to you people for the past seven hours! We can't give an innocent person the Dementor's Kiss!"

Scrimgeour gave him a look that plainly expressed just how naïve the man considered that statement to be, but rather than feeling chastised or embarrassed by his childish belief that the Ministry would see to it that justice was done, Ron was only angry.

For about as long as he could remember, Ron had wanted to be an Auror. He had believed that by being trained by the very best he would be an asset in the war and later, after they had won (because Ron had never doubted that they would win in the end) he would stand as a guard against any future threats to the safety of the Wizarding World. There were not many times that Ron had felt real pride himself. He wasn't the smart Weasley like Bill, or the athletic Weasley like Charlie or Ginny. He wasn't funny like the twins or successful like Percy. He doubted anyone else knew that he had long since figured out that he had been made a Prefect because greater things than a paltry position of school authority were expected of Harry and he was next best thing. It had taken him a few weeks to reason that one out, but he had figured it out long before Harry ever had. If Harry had ever figured it out, that is.

 _The next best thing_. That was Ron's sole claim to fame. But even without being the hero of the story, there had come a time in his life when Ron had reconciled himself to the fact that he had made a difference and it had been important. He helped Harry get to the Stone when no one else their age would have been able to do it. He had tried his best to rescue Ginny and had supported Harry after the Tri-Wizard. He wasn't a leader or a hero, the way he had once dreamed of being, but he was _important_ when he had fought alongside Harry. He was the best version of himself when he tried to do the right thing and he felt that the best way to hold onto that feeling of importance was to build a career out of protecting the innocent.

But like so many other times in life, he had been wrong. ' _Protecting the innocent'_ was a naïve little lie that the Ministry told children and fools. Ron wasn't quite sure which one he had been in this instance, but he thought he was probably just a foolish child.

He could actually feel his ears start to burn and his blotches of color appear on his cheeks and neck as they so often did when he was upset or angry, but for once Ron was too furious to care at all how ridiculous he might have looked, he couldn't believe that the Chief Auror could just stand idly by in the face of such obvious corruption.

"We can't do this! What part of what I've told you is unclear? Harry was _set up_! He wasn't responsible for what happened, Voldemort framed him." Ron barely registered that it was probably the first time he had ever said the name without so much as a stutter.

Rather than flinching away from the name as most people might have done, Scrimgeour merely lifted a bushy eyebrow, looking almost impressed that this First Year trainee to the Program was saying the name so many fully qualified Aurors feared to speak or even hear. Perhaps even impressed that a First Year trainee was standing up to him when Ron was well aware that even the Senior Aurors were nothing but deferential.

He was quiet a moment before he spoke again, this time more softly, his tone firm but with an underlying sympathy to it that Ron felt only made the situation worse. "Weasley, this isn't Hogwarts and Ivan Tyson is no Albus Dumbledore. If you haven't figured it out already, let me spell it out for you as simply as I can- it never mattered if Potter was guilty. It never mattered that the squib died or those muggle child abusers were tortured. The Ministry never gave a flying fuck what happened, or if Potter was actually serving Voldemort. In a perfect world, with a smarter Minister, they would have waited long enough for Potter to actually get rid of the threat before they had gotten rid of him, but it comes to the same thing- Tyson isn't going to let Potter off."

"Because he sees him as a threat?" Hermione asked quietly. Her face was still rather pale from the stress of the day and the argument that she had had with her superior. Nothing had been said but Ron had taken enough observation courses at this point to realize that there was more to Hermione's relationship with Thurston Grey than pure professionalism. It made him feel strangely lonely.

Scrimgeour frowned at the girl that must have looked unfamiliar to him, but he didn't deny the question. "Potter…there have been rumors in the department for quite some time. Under the direction of our… _esteemed_ Minister, our new Auror training in Azkaban - despite the changes that have been made, I would like to think that we still train out people in basic observation techniques."

"Other people knew that Harry was innocent?" Hermione asked, anger returning to her voice.

"Rumors aren't fact and you'll find that it can be quite easy to convince yourself of what you want to believe when you can see the advantages to disregarding the truth. The two of you…you're young," Scrimgeour sighed and when he spoke there was a hint of genuine kindness in his tone. "You can have long successful careers here. Let me speak frankly, more than you'll hear from anyone else but I'm an old man, if things were different I might still consider myself a player in this little game but I know the rules and…well let me just be honest in saying I don't feel like playing anymore, so I don't see my time at the Ministry lasting much longer. So let me give you a knuts' worth of free advice- don't pursue this. You won't like where it leads and you will get nothing for it."

"You expect us to do nothing?" Ron asked sharply.

"I expect nothing to happen," Scrimgeour corrected. "The decision has been made, and if you try to be objective about the whole thing for a minute ask yourself- why wouldn't it have been made? Potter is a strong wizard. He was strong as a teenager and will no doubt be even more so now. Potter was always going to present a problem to those in power. The 'Savior of the Wizarding World'. It's a story a politician would die for."

"Harry never wanted to be a politician."

"The Harry you knew was 15, no one at 15 has a damn clue where their life is going to lead," Scrimgeour pointed out grimly. "And Fudge had already played himself a fool. Had he not been able to pin up Potter as a proverbial lamb for slaughter when he did, the man wouldn't have survived another month in office. There had already been talk of a vote of no confidence. So, he gets rid of Potter and solves his own problem.

"But if Fudge thought that Potter was a problem before, its nothing on letting him go now. Fudge had spent a bloody year dragging Potter's name through the mud before he had him chucked in Azkaban. Now the kid has spent four years splitting his time between Dementors and government sanctioned torture. The boy would be out for blood and quite frankly the lot of us would deserve it. And to make matters worse, if the people ever thought that the Ministry had locked up their hero, the one people _still_ think was once prophesized to be the only one capable of defeating You-Know-Who, there will be open revolt. The only thing the people would accept is for Potter to be their leader and Tyson can't have that. He's wrapped his administration up like a pretty present. It glows and sparkles on the outside and the people like to ooo and ahhh at it, but inside? Its empty.

"Potter on the other hand…well from the things I've heard and what I suspect? He would be the opposite. Not the shiniest package by any means but my guess is one would be more than satisfied with the depth and strength he has to offer. Tyson is never going to allow Potter into a position to take his power. The only thing you can do is separate yourself from this whole thing before you ruin your own careers."

There should have been anger. Anger that had been building all day, as person after person had refused to listen to him. Even the fucking _Prophet_ had refused to publish a story about Harry's innocence, citing the fact that it 'wasn't the angle they were going for.' No one had listened, no one had helped, and Ron didn't know what else he could do. The rising fury that had been building and burning in him all day like a towering inferno was gone as though someone had suddenly stifled the flames. Now he was empty. Hollow.

Ron's face was blank and his heart broken as he pulled the golden bands off his robes. The bands that signified that he was still an Auror in training.

"You can go fuck yourself," he said. He felt Hermione startle beside him and for a mad moment, he expected her to reprimand him for his language as she used to do when they were kids together, but when glanced at her, he saw her lips compressed in a thin line and the glint of her eyes. It was a grim expression to be sure but one that he knew was filled with approval for his actions.

Oddly Ron was almost angrier at Scrimgeour's lack of reaction to his incendiary words than anything else. That, at least, would have been an argument that he could have had. A fight that he was capable of waging, rather than the paralyzing helplessness that he felt for Harry now.

"If you do anything to try and stop the Kiss, you will be arrested," Scrimgeour told him with infuriating calm. "For what its worth…I think you would have been a very bad Auror, all things considered."

Ron felt a swell of indignation but before he could retort, it was Hermione that answered, her voice soft but resolute. "You're right. Ron's too _good_ for your department. I wish more Aurors were like him."

Scrimgeour was quiet for a moment before he said, "Once upon a time…I think we were."

HPHPHP

Remus Lupin was a man that had spent most of his life in grief.

He had spent his childhood grieving his lost opportunities after the wolf had bit him. He had grown up with no friends and even when he had joyfully received the unexpected news that he would actually be able to attend the legendary Hogwarts after all, he had still not expected that to change. But then James and Sirius and Peter had proven to be the best friends that he could have asked for and he had been grateful. Grateful that he was happy. Grateful that they were able to accept him despite being considered a monster by the rest of the world. Things were good.

For a time.

Because, in spite of their friendship, it had not stopped the grief. There, at Hogwarts, it had always been present in the background. In his adolescence, it had been the grief of a cursed future. Remus had never been among the top performing students. He had not possessed the natural talent that had carried Sirius and James to the top of the class. He was not a brilliant researcher the way Severus Snape had been or a creative thinker like his other friends and Lily had been. Nor had possessed the natural charisma and charm that had endeared Sirius and James to professors and students alike. Nevertheless, Remus had always managed decent grades. Exceeding Expectations in Charms, Defense and Transfiguration. Acceptable in Potions despite it being his worst subject. An Outstanding in Ancient Runes, something Sirius had teased him about as it had been the latter's worst subject (it was, after all, something that actually required study rather than innate talent) and therefore deemed by him to be unimportant.

Remus had done well because unlike the top performers of their year, he had _worked_ for it. There was never a homework assignment that he hadn't turned in or a test that he hadn't studied meticulously for. The only person in their year that had studied more had been the ambitious Severus Snape who possessed both talent and drive. He wanted so badly to prove that he was worth the risks the Headmaster had taken on him, and he had done very well. But always in his mind was the realization that no matter how well he did in the class or what his NEWT scores would ultimately be, he would never be able to have the future that the others discussed so casually among themselves. He would never work for the Ministry. He would never be known as a great researcher. He would never even work in a respectable shop.

There had been a dread of the future that Remus would later look back on with a hint of irony because as much as he grieved his future, he had never prepared himself for the losses that would come.

Remus wouldn't know true grief until later. The grief of war. The guilt of the bad choices that he had been forced to make in order to maintain his cover with the werewolves but had only isolated him further from his friends to the point where even his closest friends had grown suspicious of him. And then, finally, the absolute suffocating grief that had come with his losing his best friends. Lily, James, Peter- all dead in a single night, with Sirius- funny, charming and completely irreverent and rule-breaking Sirius- to blame for it all.

He had been alone and in pain and the years had slipped away from him in an endless monotony that were designed to cater exclusively to his pain. He had not made new friends. He had taken few lovers and never one that had lasted past a single night. He shunned the idea of living among werewolves, but could not fully immerse himself among wizards lest they grow suspicious of his absences surrounding the full moon. It would have been easiest to have simply sought refuge in the muggle world. There, his behavior would have been difficult to explain to any employers, but they would never have guessed at the truth and accommodations for medical conditions were more easily made, but he had stubbornly railed against even that small comfort. He had immersed himself in grief because it was familiar and expected, and there seemed nothing else left to him.

Except that Remus had allowed his own grief and pain and isolation to blind him from the truth. Sirius had been innocent and that had been bad enough. Bad enough that Remus had never pressed Dumbledore or the Order to look more closely at the case. Bad enough that Remus had never questioned the fact that loyal, reckless Sirius was not the type to spy in shadows and _never_ the type to betray the man he had considered closer than a brother. For all those things Sirius could forgive him.

But Sirius had been nothing short of furious to discover what had happened to his beloved godson. Abandoned to muggles- and according to the stories from James, the very worst muggles imaginable. And then to learn that Remus had not so much as checked up on him before learning that Sirius had escaped. Not a single visit. Not a single letter.

One night, after five Firewhiskeys and 7 months of being trapped in Grimmauld Place, Sirius had let Remus know exactly how he felt about the fact that the Wizarding World had been happy to celebrate Harry amongst themselves but had never lifted a finger to help him when he had needed it. Sirius had made it quite plain that he could forgive Remus for thinking the worst of him, but he would never forget that Remus had never thought about Harry at all.

Remus had had his excuses. There had never been a reason to check on Harry. Remus had never expected to have children and with that life path in mind had never wanted them. The Ministry would never have granted custody of the Boy-Who-Lived to a werewolf and Dumbledore himself had once told the former members of the Order shortly after Lily and James' funeral that Harry was safest with his mother's family. He had convinced himself that it was easier that way. A clean break rather than stilted, awkward visits with a man that the boy wouldn't even know. Remus had many excuses- many of them rational, valid reasons- for why he couldn't have raised Harry- but that had never stopped Sirius from condemning him for refusing to check on him.

Remus had been complicit in his silence. He had never been a leader, never one to go against what others expected. Albus Dumbledore had made his decisions and while the tenacious little Gryffindor in him was convinced that he had not acted in a malicious way, had in fact argued to Harry's godfather that he had never had reason to suspect that Harry was anything but happy with his family, the small truthful part of him acknowledged that he had been quite happy to have this last remaining link to his past cleanly severed. Without seeing Harry, there was no reminder of what he had lost and nothing left to grieve.

These thoughts swirled around him as he entered the atrium of the Ministry and followed the tightly packed crowd into the large staging area. Public Kisses had been a tactic that the former Minister Bagnold had implemented in the last year or so of the war. Remus and many others had come to see various Death Eaters that were accused of the worst crimes publicly Kissed, a means of both satisfying a rabidly terrified public and putting the fear of Merlin into the Death Eaters still at large. Even then, the tactic had not been a new one; older wizards had talked about its use during the days when Grindelwald had terrorized the country and before that other administrations throughout history had used it during particularly turbulent times for the same reasons.

It was a truly horrifying thing to watch.

Remus still remembered the first time he had witnessed someone receiving the Kiss. It had been in March of 1980 and later he would realize it was actually the last time the four Marauders had all been in one place together outside of an Order meeting. Lily had been at home, already pregnant and having no desire to expose her unborn child to such a horrible creature.

The wizard in question was a particularly brutal Death Eater named Tywin Selwyn. He had been a deadly duelist and a man that made Bellatrix Lestrange seem downright restrained in her love for the Dark Arts. So unhinged and violent, the man had rarely even bothered to conceal his identity, instead proudly proclaiming his public allegiance to his revered Lord. Even with his oddly public reveal, it had taken well over a year to bring the man down and almost everyone had been surprised that he been brought down alive.

Remus could remember Sirius' glee that the twisted man would be receiving such a harsh punishment after all that he had done and the number of innocent people the man had killed. Sirius had practically been bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation. James had been quiet, but stoically resigned to the spectacle, as though to him the judgement was necessary but nothing to celebrate. Peter had been white and trembling, a reaction that Remus had taken for sympathy at the time but could now see was fear of his own discovery. Remus…had shared much of Sirius' sentiment on the manner. Though more restrained than his friend, Remus had also believed that Selwyn had deserved such a fate.

However, he had not been prepared for the cold precision with which the Aurors would secure a struggling and hysterically giggling Selwyn to the magical circle that would keep the prisoner in place. He hadn't been prepared for the cold shiver that had run down his spine as the Dementor had come forward with such eager anticipation of a full meal. Nor had he been prepared for the way he could see the mind and personality of the man- mad as he clearly was- drain away from him in the moments the Dementor's mouth had clamped down on his own. The procedure only took about a minute.

One minute and every aspect of Tywin Selwyn, terrible though he had been, was gone forever. There was no crazed gleam in the man's eyes. No anger or glee in his expression. No memory of what he had done or who he had been.

And the crowd had cheered.

Sirius, slightly paler but still with fevered excitement, had yelled his approval as two Healers had stepped forward and guided the man- still absurdly upright- out of the room as though he were an automated statue. The man would remain in St. Mungo's until he died. Twenty years later, Remus wasn't sure if the body of Tywin Selwyn lived or not. He wondered if it mattered.

Remus remembered feeling sick with himself later that night in the dark of his small flat. He had spent most of his life suppressing any kind of bloodlust and need for violence because he had always known what it could lead to. He had always wanted to avoid those basest of instincts within himself, but in that moment, he had cheered with the roaring crowd and it had felt so very satisfying to see justice being carried out. In the early spring months of 1980, the world had become a dark place. By this time the disappearances that plagued them for years had become public and grisly murders. Friends turned on friends in hopes of saving their own families and it was impossible to know if it was the work of the Imperious or simply the power of fear. That day he had given into the bloodlust but later had felt some remorse for it.

While the rest of the Wizarding World had celebrated on the First of November in 1981, Remus had once again been in a state of grief, but he did remember managing a feeling of relief that the public Kisses were no longer needed. There had been a rush to declare the war well and truly over, and several other mistakes had been made- quite frankly it was a small miracle that Sirius had not been given one of the public Kisses- but the fervor for excessive retribution had at least been curtailed after news that Voldemort had been destroyed and the grip of fear and hopelessness had loosened for them all.

That day he would never have guessed that 20 years later he would be in that same atrium awaiting the scheduled execution of Lily and James' son. The little baby that he had only been able to see once before things had gotten too dangerous and Lily and James had been forced into hiding. The young man that had approached him with quiet determination to ward off dementors because they were his greatest fear. The young man that he had held back from the veil of death as he had almost chased his godfather through it while dealing with his own weight of grief. He wondered if it was irony that he would see Harry be Kissed by the very creatures that he had taught the boy to defend himself against.

Ron and Hermione claimed he was innocent. The Ministry claimed certainty that he was guilty, but Remus was old enough to know that meant little. The rest were...skeptical.

The problem was, there were so many contradicting pieces of evidence. Harry had confessed under Veritaserum to using an Unforgivable. But then he had also claimed his innocence in regard to torturing his relatives and killing Arabella. Harry bore the Dark Mark which all of their intelligence had led them to believe had to be taken willingly. They had never learned of anyone else being forcibly marked in the past. But was their intelligence accurate? None of them, not even Severus, were privy to how the Dark Mark was truly created, and Hermione had made an impassioned argument that there was no one else that Voldemort would want to set up as badly as Harry, so no one was would have been given the Mark under the same circumstances. Harry claimed a connection to Voldemort that had once seemingly saved Arthur Weasleys' life. And yet, every single expert on the topic agreed that the connection that Harry claimed existed between them couldn't possibly exist, despite Ron and Hermione both insisting that they had seen evidence that it must, because Harry couldn't have faked the physical effects it had on him.

It had been a truly insane 24 hours. Harry had helped them obtain the Horcrux that they had needed to defeat Voldemort- but Dumbledore was in critical condition and at this point it was uncertain when he would wake up. The Ministry had been attacked and ransacked in a manner that no one had expected. Before they had been able to process anything, Harry had been arrested and sentenced. No deliberation or trial. Not even a meeting with the Wizengamot to confirm the legality of re-enacting such a punishment.

Remus didn't want this. They needed more time. The Ministry needed to _properly_ question Avery and reopen Harry's case with all the evidence and Harry being allowed a proper defense. It was the only way to know that they weren't condemning an innocent soul to the worst possible fate. Remus' leg bounced uncomfortably; his brow coated with a sleek, cold sweat. And still he didn't make any move to change things.

Ron and Hermione were both present, pale and agitated. There had been a furious debate among them in which desperate last-minute schemes had been discussed. Could they manage to bring in a Portkey? Wards had been put in place to avoid any attempts at magical escape. What about the use of a House-elf? A desperately made case to first Kreacher than even Dobby had confirmed that while the Voldemort might not have thought of properly warding against the magical creatures, the Ministry of Magic itself was old enough to have pre-existing defenses against them. What about attacking the holding cell and taking out the guards? Remus had overheard the two of them disturbingly close to agreeing to such a dangerous plan before having to scrap that as well for lack of time, preparation and access. Remus had no doubt that had the two of them even a couple of days to properly plan a breakout, they would have gone through with it.

In the end the two of them had come into the atrium with a defeated air of resignation. Remus could see Hermione shifting in a combination of impotent frustration and disgust. She had tried and she had failed and there had always been nothing worse to Hermione than failure. Her breath was coming in sharp little gasps and she seemed to have worked herself into quite a state. Which was more than could be said for Ron, who had gone almost disturbingly quiet in the last hour. White-faced and grim, the normally amiable red-head looked as though something vital had been torn from him.

It was hard to decipher exactly what Ron was thinking at the moment, but Remus could tell that part of the disgust that Hermione was feeling was not exclusive to the fact that they were about to Kiss a man she believed to be innocent, it was the spectacle that had been made of it. The fevered crowd that had caught Remus' attention all those years ago was present today in even greater force. This was their former hero, the one people still believed could have saved them all if he had not betrayed them by siding with the enemy. There was an air of animalistic frenzy in their desire to punish. The air stunk with the compression of sweat and bloodlust. The closest descriptor that one could use was that it was perverse distortion of joy. Schadenfreude at its climax.

Remus could understand where it came from. The Ministry- the safe harbor in the storm- had been breached. Azkaban had been liberated. The past thirty-six hours or so had been filled with pain, fear, loss and anger. After believing that they had been making progress, that the people had found a leader- a beacon- to keep them all safe, the illusion had been shattered.

And now the people would have their revenge. If they couldn't defeat Voldemort or recapture the Death Eaters, taking down the boy that had been unable to save them seemed to be the strange consolation prize the Wizarding World had settled on.

For an event that had seemingly come together within a day, Remus could see immediately that the Ministry had invested quite a bit in the image that they were trying to project. There were crisp, official banners proclaiming the power and legitimacy of the Ministry hanging across the high dais that was to serve as both stage and execution block. The entire Wizengamot had come , dressed in full regalia and positioned so that they were visible to the crowd beneath them. Most surprising of all was the presence of none other than Joseph McLaggen himself, the most senior member of the Wizengamot. At 119 years of age, he was elderly even by Wizards standards and had served in the government for roughly the past 90 years. The man was still sharp and intelligent and known for his vast knowledge and strict adherence to Wizarding traditions. The man was no doubt delighted by the return of what he what he would surely consider the 'old ways', and Purebloods and Muggleborn alike had a long history of bowing to authority in all matters.

Next to the Wizengamot were the Heads of each of the major departments, also dressed in their best formal robes. The top echelon of their society standing at an attention, as eager to prove themselves against Voldemort as they were in condemning a boy that wouldn't have been old enough to purchase his own drink in muggle America. _A few short weeks of 20_. Lily and James had died young but even they would outlive their son in terms of lifespan, the boy they had strove to protect with their dying breaths. For the first time, everything about Harry's life struck Remus as grotesque. Lily and James would have been appalled to see what they had given their lives for.

A childhood abandoned to a forgotten cupboard. No love or even affection shown to the boy that had meant the world to them, only days filled with grueling chores and nights spent in loneliness. Had there been fear? Remus could only assume that there had been fear of his uncle, but he could only _assume._ Even after Harry had told him as a thirteen-year-old student that he didn't have any happy memories beyond finding out that he was a wizard, Remus had never once asked him about his childhood. He had done nothing to help him and had never truly felt any responsibility to do otherwise despite the fact that in the muggle world he would have been considered a mandated reporter to the authorities if he had such suspicions about a student's homelife.

But Harry had escaped his childhood, something that no one had ever stopped to consider as a feat worthy of note at all, only to have an adolescence spent fighting against increasingly escalating dangers. Basilisks, dragons, armed mermen, dementors, death threats- Remus thought that all of those trials paled in comparison to how their world had treated him. Surely the psychological chaos of constantly alternating fear and awe from so many people would be far more traumatic than even the intense fear of death the boy had constantly been exposed to. Harry had always seemed to rise to the top- until he hadn't. He had lost and he had suffered and rather than offer even a moment's compassion, their world had scorned him for it.

It was strange to realize, standing in the nearly carnival-like atmosphere of the crowd, that Harry's failures might be more of a reflection on the rest of their world- even a reflection on Remus himself- than they could have been on a fifteen-year-old boy that had never really had a chance in the world. It was bad enough to realize what they were doing to a young man that had already suffered more than he should have to suffer in his short life, but to consider- even for a moment- that Harry might be innocent was not something that Remus was prepared to wrap his head around.

 _Harry couldn't be innocent_ , his mind screamed at him. It was inconceivable. A crime against…a crime against morality itself.

The double doors banged open and two Aurors came in with Harry secured between them. Remus could see his green eyes, clear and blazing as though he was about to do battle despite the fact that defeat was assured. It was not the look of a man that had accepted his fate, and yet there was no struggle as he was led up towards the dais. The crowd's roar heightened to a frenzy, screams and jeers echoing around the chamber, venom dripping with the sheer force of their hatred for their once promised savior.

"It's too easy! He should suffer!"

"Death Eater!

"Death Eater!"

"Traitor! You were supposed to save us!"

Harry's face was impassive. If Remus didn't know better, he would think that the man before him didn't even hear the rants of the crowd. There was a composure to him that was enviable. He walked slowly but there was an assuredness to his steps that spoke of a strange confidence. _What was he thinking? What did anyone think when they knew it was the last time they would ever be able to think freely?_

There was no fear present in his expression, but there wasn't anger either. Instead there was only an odd…determination. That was the expression that Remus read in the still young face. But determination for what? Remus wondered. Determination to stay brave in the end? Determination not to beg? He could understand pride; he had seen it often among others that the Ministry had executed. He had also seen it again and again during the First War when the Death Eaters had attacked innocents in force. Mothers determined to be brave in front of their terrified children. Fathers determined never to give into the enemy in their final moments. Bravery was not as rare as many believed. Remus had known all manner of people to face their end with grace, but that wasn't quite the look that he saw in Harry's eyes now.

Despite the large crowd present, there were actually very few Aurors. The DMLE and especially the Aurors had been working around the clock, still trying to recapture the prisoners that had escaped, or at least provide protection to others where they could. The strange reports of fighting and disappearances rippling through the grapevine with no definite answers yet were no doubt part of the distraction for the Aurors. However, there were still nearly a dozen men and women in uniform present and Remus could see that only one or two of them showed the same fevered ecstasy as the rest of the crowd at what they were about to witness. In fact, a few of the Aurors in particular looked extremely reluctant to be present but it was clear that they weren't about to go against their orders.

Remus had not had many occasions to see their Minister in public. Though the man was well known for his large gathering and was a celebrated speaker, as a werewolf Remus tended to avoid the large events that the Ministry was using to bolster public support. Therefore, it was hard to determine exactly what the man was thinking but Ivan Tyson certainly looked pleased with himself.

Though his smiled dipped slightly at the way Harry's self-possession never slipped as he made his way steadily towards the dais. What should have been a frog-march appeared more like a rather awkward five-legged race contested with the Aurors pinning him in on both sides. He was not being dragged to his fate, fighting futilely against the inevitable with the fear of the dying. Nor was he being supported limply, too dazed or frightened even to make his way without the aid of others. Instead there was a slight, even quiet…dignity in his stride. Remus didn't know if it was bravado, true Gryffindor to the end, or if Harry simply had accepted his fate but even the crowd lost steam in the face of such command.

Harry was marched up to the dais and secured in the magical circle that was warded against him leaving without a wand and a special badge from an Auror. The circle was meant to prevent escape both for the prisoner and the Dementors that would be used for the job but was also designed to create just enough room for the prisoner to move around, creating the illusion for themselves that they could escape but in reality, only creating a scene for the watching crowd. Spectacle at its most cruel and entertaining.

Harry was left by alone by the two Aurors and faced the crowd with an aura of calm. His face still but eyes defiant, the slight trembling of his fingers the only indication that the young man was at all scared about what was about to take place. There was muffled sound of a cast _Sonorus_ charm and the crowd quieted momentarily to hear from their beloved leader.

When he reached the appropriate spot on the dais, Tyson's voice echoed across the crowd. "Good Witches and Wizards of our world, I come to you today with a promise: justice will always be served. I know that you are scared. I know that you are worried for your families and your livelihood, and yes, I know that your confidence in me and my administration has been shaken. It should be shaken. I deserve your fear and your worry but it is my burden to carry and to fix and today I start the next phase in our plan to build a better, stronger world. Today we put an end to half measures and ensure our own destiny. Today we take the first of many new steps needed to protect ourselves from any and all threats!

"Harry Potter, a boy that was supposed to protect us. A boy whose role was carved by destiny to ensure your safety and the safety of your husbands and wives and children **betrayed** us. He sided with the enemy and turned against what is right and just. He killed an Auror and conspired alongside others in the escape from Azkaban prison that has endangered our world. I vow to you- those that have broken our laws, those that have turned against the good people of the Wizarding World will suffer the consequences.

"Today we start a new chapter, one where we will never have to fear powerful dictators or hang our hopes on the arbitrary heroes that will turn on us when we need them. The Ministry is the bedrock of our society. The governing body built upon on the will of the people, for the people. It is the Ministry that cannot betray you, for why would it betray itself? Its very nature is to serve. To protect. And to protect it must eliminate all threats to our safety. Harry Potter you have been sentenced to the Kiss. Do you have any last words?"

Remus was idly surprised to feel his heart race. He had been angry for so long but now, in the moment, he felt a great swell of pity. Harry, a boy young enough to have been Remus' own child, had he ever actually wanted any. A boy that suffered his whole life and would now be nothing. And strangely, it was Harry's rare but earnest smile when he spoke to Teddy that seemed to sear into this memory in this moment.

Harry stepped forward within the small circle of space he had been allotted; his stance nearly calm though his hands still trembled slightly at his sides. His head was high, his shoulders stiff with apparent strain if you looked closely enough but still straight and strong. His breathing, if one noticed, was fast and shallow. But when he spoke, his voice was loud and confident in a way that Remus did not recall ever hearing from him before. Last words to be remembered indeed.

"Justice. That is what your Minister promised you all and that is what the world deserves but do each of you? Have you all done everything that you can do to stop Voldemort? To help yourselves? You are all quick to tell me that its my _job_ to save you but none of you even attempted to help me do it. Justice comes for everyone in the end. I can only hope that each of you will be able to face it with a clear conscience, as I will today. I always tried to do right. I told the truth and you didn't believe me. I tried to stand up against Voldemort and I was told I wasn't good enough. I was never enough." Harry swallowed and for a second, he glanced down. Remus wondered if he had meant to say that last part in what was otherwise a very well-rehearsed speech.

"You should demand Justice and that starts with your Minister. He is not an innocent man. He is responsible for the rape and as a result the _death_ of Margret Clark and if there anyone that deserves to be facing judgement right now, it's him!"

There was a moment of nearly perfect silence following the accusation. Remus glanced to the side and saw the shock he was feeling at such a pronouncement brought to life in the expressions on both Hermione and Ron's faces. "Daniel said she had been assaulted..." Hermione whispered. "Why didn't he ever say…"

"Auror oaths," Ron replied grimly. "If I was ever going to second guess my decision to quit, that sealed the deal. The bloody bastard knew that the Aurors couldn't act against him because all of the Aurors swear loyalty directly to the Minister himself. They aren't allowed to act against him, old laws to avoid a possible coup d'état."

There was a low murmur from the crowd, quickly escalating into a crescendo of mixed laughter and scorn. They did not believe him; the very idea was laughable. The convicted murderer and the enemy of the people accusing the Minister of Magic, one of the most popular Ministers in decades, of such vile and disgusting crimes. The jeers shifted from general abuse to cries and demands for the Kiss.

There was the return of that sick feeling of joy and for the first time Harry's shoulders slumped as though even that last moment had been a defeat for him. The final betrayal. The last of so many in his short life. Remus did not know what Harry thought could have possibly resulted from such an outrageous and polarizing accusation but it clear that it had not had the desired effect on the crowd.

Ivan Tyson's eyes glittered with danger and in that moment, Remus recognized the predator in the man. The malevolence that was usually so well hidden behind a well-mannered exterior. It was a man that wanted- _needed-_ absolute control over every situation. A man that had worked and wrestled for power for years and would allow it to slip away from him by any means. And suddenly Remus knew. He knew it as surely as if the information could have literally punched him the gut- Harry was innocent. He was going to receive the Kiss and he was innocent and Remus hadn't believed him or helped him or even offered him the smallest amount of comfort after he had spent four years suffering.

Tyson gave a stiff but no less eager nod.

The Dementor stepped forward and Harry's eyes locked onto a spot just to the right of Remus and he could see him looking at his two friends- Ron and Hermione- the only two that had believed him in his last hours, the only ones that had tried to prove his innocence even if it had been entirely too late. Though he couldn't see their expressions from the side angle, Remus could see that Harry recognized that they believed him. Something like peace, if not actual forgiveness, entered his eyes for a moment before being replaced by fear. The desire for survival overcoming all else. The Dementor bent down and in spite of the fear overtaking him, Harry tipped his head back in welcome for the Kiss.

Hermione was sobbing and Ron was openly crying as well as the jaw clamped down and started to pull Harry's soul from his body. For a moment, it was just the same horrific experience it always was, the pull, the gradual dimming in a subject's eyes…when suddenly a brilliantly bright, white light enveloped the entire dais. There was an unearthly scream of pain and misery and…loss.

The celebrating crowd froze in fear and a thick, impenetrable silence rained. The white light faded and where there had been two beings on the dais there was now only one. Harry Potter swayed, his eyes glassy and unfocused and Remus felt more than heard the gasp from the frozen crowd.

"Merlin," Joseph McLaggen breathed as though it were an invocation of the man incarnate and despite his age, he fell to his knees without aid of his cane.

There was a beat of stillness before the standing Wizengamot fell, followed by the Ministry employees and the crowd rippled down as though in a choreographed move.

Every wizard, as surely as they knew that magic was an essential and innate part of their very existence, was aware on a very primal level of their being that there were some acts of magic so powerful, so spectacularly beyond the realm of their comprehension that it demanded nothing short of absolute obedience. What they had witnessed, it was a declaration of magic itself. It was too pure, powerful and absolute in its decree to ignore and yet even as they fell to their knees in awe, there was also a tremble as well...because magic was not without judgement and everyone present knew that their judgments and condemnations would not go without punishment.

Harry blinked slowly out at kneeling, nearly literally spellbound crowd before crumpling to the floor unconscious.

 **A/N: So this is this, for all intents and purposes, this was the big reveal, and one that I have been nervous about for the whole fic since people's reaction to a deux ex machina (which I feel this was) solution can be quite split. More will be discussed in the next chapter but for anyone thinking the scene was unclear, It's not a spoiler to say that this event is not completely without precedent and its** _ **only**_ **possible if Harry is completely innocent of his crimes and so by his little public declaration…Ivan Tyson just found himself expectedly in very big trouble.**

 **Also- since many people seem extremely concerned that Harry is just going to forgive and forget everything, that was not what he did with Ron or Hermione. He thought he was dying and, in that moment- and that moment alone- he didn't want to die angry. Now that Harry is alive, he will have plenty of time to make sure that everyone earns his forgiveness and some just won't be getting it at all.**

 **Thanks as always for reading and reviewing and special thanks to the wonderful mylittlehazmat for editing this for me or else you all would have to contend with the mess that it was before she helped.**


	21. Explanations

**Chapter 21: Explanations**

Marcus Smith was not born of _those_ Smiths. His family was not descended from the once great Helga Hufflepuff. He actually had no idea who his ancestors were over a thousand years ago. Nor did he have access to a dragon-guarded vault that protected wealth as well as reputation in a burst of fire. He wasn't even a Pureblood.

That wasn't a fact that he heavily advertised. More than once the assumption had been made at the Ministry that he must come from _those_ Smiths and why would he ever correct anyone that was foolish enough not to realize that while the name Smith held a great deal of importance and prestige in the Wizarding World, in the _muggle_ world it was almost synonymous with ambiguity? It was the name of the masses. A name that literally anyone could carry and no one blinked at unless they were the sort to be suspicious of anything _too_ mundane and ordinary.

Marcus Smith had worked for the Ministry for nearly fifteen years. A Muggleborn of middle-class background, he was far closer to his family than he would have let on to his co-workers. When at work, Marcus allowed jokes about Mudbloods and muggles to float over him, laughing when appropriate, largely staying quiet. He had learned early in the game how to project certain traits that seemed to scream 'Pureblood' to those watching and if he didn't make as many jokes as some of the others and he didn't actively support the pieces of legislation suggesting that Muggleborn children be identified early and subsequently removed from their parents, then it was attributed to his liberal attitudes more than his background. Muggleborns didn't advance and Marcus might have been a Ravenclaw but that didn't mean that he was without ambition.

The Wizarding World came with its problems, but Marcus loved magic. The feeling of it traveling through of your body and out of your wand was a joy that he was not prepared to abandon even if it meant a bit of hypocrisy on his part. And really, what was there to feel guilty about? He had not created the system. It was hard to be promoted as a Muggleborn but Marcus had worked his way into a comfortable position working right under the Minister himself and he had done so purely on a combination of his own skill and cunning.

But in spite of his love of magic, Marcus Smith remained quite close with his muggle family and was in fact very familiar with not only muggle technology but current affairs in the muggle world. It was for this reason that Marcus Smith was one of the few people working directly under the Minister that was not caught off guard by the sheer level of _panic_ that Ivan Tyson was attempting to contain.

His muggle cousin, Daniel Smith, was about the same age as himself and _he_ had spent the past fifteen years making a name for himself in the financial world. Daily, he traded sums that would have made Lucius Malfoy stand up and take notice if for no other reason than because Wizards were completely ignorant of the modern investments, hedge funds and venture capitalism that drove the muggle economy to heights that Wizards were unable to attain under the tight fist of the goblins. Daniel had spent a couple of years in Canada, leaving just before the large company Livent got into trouble for accumulating $334 million American dollars in debt and their co-founder was arrested for fraud and forgery. Daniel loved to tell the story of how he had liquidated his own assets in the company and changed jobs to a more moderate (though by no means small) salary in the UK in exchange for knowing that he wouldn't be caught up in the scandal and arrested. He had sold his stock at top value and put in his notice only a month before the Canadian Securities Industry had raided the building and arrested several of the top officials. There had been a brief investigation regarding suspicion of insider trading, however, there had never been any evidence connecting him to the crime. Daniel had never been personally involved and had sold more on intuition than hard fact, something that Daniel was oddly prouder than if he _had_ investigated fully and gotten all the facts. Marcus always silently shook his head at this point in the story, convinced that had the man been a wizard he would have definitely been more Gryffindor than Ravenclaw.

It was usually after a few pints that Daniel would cheerfully retell his cleverness and he would always utter the same words, which Marcus knew his cousin considered to be invariably sage advice despite their simplicity. ' _When they start shredding, its time to tear out'._

The day after Harry Potter survived the Dementor's Kiss, Marcus Smith walked into barely controlled chaos in the Minister's office. Stacks of parchment were burning in metal trash cans. Floos were signaling left and right as people tried to pull in support, wrangle deals with political friends and foes, and lawyers were seen scribbling away over what looked to be large tombs of Constitutional Law books with the express purpose of seeing just how much trouble they were in.

Marcus himself had not been present at the Kiss. Personally, he had found the idea of watching a person lose their soul to the horrible creature macabre in a way that made him long for the comparable civility of the muggle world. He had no desire to watch such a gruesome sight and lacked the bloodlust that many of colleagues had shared in 'taking down Potter once and for all'. A few of his colleagues had been surprised when he had begged off attending, claiming (with rolling eyes and rather exasperated expression) that his wife had insisted that he be home that night for dinner, but Marcus had been quite pleased to escape the spectacle.

But he had certainly heard about it. Every Wireless station had been talking about it. Owls had gotten themselves an extra workout, the Floo system had actually shut down at one point as the Ministry had been unable to contend with the massive influx of traffic and the _Prophet_ had even a run a special midnight addition complete with several speculations as to what this new turn of events would mean for them all.

Marcus' muggle relatives would surely laugh at the sheer scope that a single event could cause their world. In the muggle world, someone surviving the impossible would be front-page news, it would mean that Harry Potter would go free and the Minister would have to contend with the political embarrassment of targeting an innocent man- because if there was one thing that was no longer in any doubt it was that Harry Potter must be innocent- but that would be the end of it.

But Marcus had now spent over 20 years in the Wizarding World if he were to count his time at Hogwarts and he knew that if there was one fundamental difference between the two worlds it was strangely the most obvious: in the Wizarding World, there was magic. Not magic as a concept or an ideal but the actual entity. And with that Magic, the magic that wizards could wield was only one small portion of what real Magic _could do_.

Magic was a force. Stronger than nature, it was something that even Wizards often forgot could be sentient in its own way. Magic was a judge, and acted as it saw fit, _when_ it saw fit and at its most base, Magic was an entity that not only shouldn't be argued with or ignored but **would not** be argued with or ignored. Harry Potter had survived the Killing Curse and somehow wizards had seemingly chosen to overlook that fact. Now Harry Potter had survived what should have been worse than death. Magic had obviously picked its champion and it was not for Wizards to question or fight against.

Marcus watched with faint amusement as the same colleagues that had gleefully gone off to watch Potter's execution now spoke of him with nothing but awe in their voices. Colleagues that had forced through increasingly repressive legislation all in the name of the Greater Good were now fearful of what might come back to haunt them. Marcus was a quick study with a sharp mind. Had he been a Half-Blood he might have been in Slytherin, but as a Muggleborn, he had atleast known enough to make sure he was in Ravenclaw. Cousin Daniel might be able to get him a position in his new firm and honestly Marcus didn't need the Ministry or even the Wizarding World to do magic. It was time to leave. After all, he figured that Daniel's words were still relevant, only in this case it was more a matter of, ' _when they start burning the parchment its time to light on out'._

Those closest to Ivan Tyson, those highest in his administration, knew enough to know about the dirty details that the public were kept in the dark about. He knew about the false arrests, the treatment of prisoners that classified as 'Enemies of the State', the bribes, the coercion. Marcus was one of the few that even knew why Tyson of all people would have an enemy in Harry Potter and what it could mean for all of them if Potter decided to come after them with the full might of what his word would now mean to the Wizarding World.

There would be no saving Tyson from Potter's wrath.

One thing was for certain- everything was about to change and in spite of everything that he stood to lose, Marcus couldn't say that he was upset by that fact. For too long everyone would had been content to allow the path of least resistance. Potter…Potter was the type to thrive under resistance. Marcus was only happy that even if he and his wife moved firmly into the muggle world to avoid the fallout, he could still keep up on what was happening via the Wireless; he had a feeling it was going to be interesting.

HPHPHP

Hermione rubbed her tired eyes and tried unsuccessfully to tilt her head enough to loosen the crick that had developed in her neck after sitting in the uncomfortable chairs outside the hospital room for so long. The sun had risen an hour ago but the hospital had been a hive of activity for hours before that. St. Mungo's had been well at capacity for the past few days after recent events but somehow a few dozen critical injuries and probably a couple hundred minor ones paled in comparison to the chaos that had revolved around the patient that Hermione was anxiously waiting for to wake up.

Harry had collapsed on the dais, and in perhaps in an effort to prove that the Wizarding World could at least be relied upon to be consistent in their ability to be utterly useless in regards to Harry, no one moved from their kneeled positions. Hermione remembered her breath feeling ragged and unsure, as if there was a distinct possibility that she might simply not take another breath after what she had just witnessed. Her hands trembled in shock and her mind…she did not think her mind had ever been so blank and utterly incapable of thought. Harry was alive. Harry was alive and seemed to _still_ possess his own soul. Harry was alive and a bloody _Dementor_ was destroyed instead. It was impossible. Inconceivable. It was…fairytale-esque in its convenience.

What she probably should have realized long time ago was…it was Harry. The impossible was always possible.

Finally, the attending Healers finally seemed to come to grips with reality and surged forward, loudly confirming that they had a pulse and that Harry was breathing. He was unconscious but physically seemed to be alright. A spell revealed the existence of his soul- appearances had not been deceiving, the Kiss had not worked. Physically he was going to be fine…of course there was no telling the mental affect. Or the emotional impact. No one spoke of those consequences, not even Hermione. They were confined to her own mind and there they would stay lest she accidentally tempt Fate with possibilities IT had somehow overlooked.

And yet despite their reassurances of Harry's physical health, he had been whisked off to a private room at St. Mungo's with the top specialists and Healers not only at his disposal but practically banging down the door to offer their assistance.

The hospital had tried to ban all visitors when a virtual mob of people had descended on it. Politicians, reporters, former school 'friends' and casual witnesses had all wanted to stay simply for the honor of saying that they had been one of the first to see him after he awoke. The Aurors had first politely and then forcibly kicked them all out. Overall a good thing to be sure but it had taken two hours of arguing and finally the interference and permission of no less than Rufus Scrimgeour himself to allow Hermione and Ron to remain behind in order to speak to Harry when the opportunity finally presented itself. The man knew firsthand that Ron and Hermione had been the only two that had even so much as attempted to side with Harry before the…the _phenomenon_ they had all just witnessed.

The two of them had been silent for hours but at long last Hermione finally spoke, her voice quiet and rather hoarse after remaining quiet for so long with the exception of her tears. "I've never read anything about that kind of magic."

Ron huffed out a laugh, "you say that like you expect me to know something that you don't, I know its been a while Hermione but things haven't changed that much."

Hermione was caught between the old feeling of amusement and exasperation that she had so often felt with Ron before they had drifted apart. The man was singularly frustrating in so many ways. "I never said I expected _you_ to know, I wasn't asking, I was just…commenting that I've never heard of anything like that."

Ron raised an eyebrow at her, "don't get cross now, my fault I suppose, I should have known that you didn't expect me to know something you didn't."

Hermione was about to respond angrily that he didn't have to be so defensive but bit her tongue when she saw that he was giving her a half smile; he was teasing her. Now that part _was_ different. The old Ron had a habit of both expecting Hermione to have all the answers and feeling insecure whenever she had dared to insinuate that she was actually smarter than him. Hermione was well aware that she would never win any prizes in her life for social graces or tact, it was one of the reasons that she was struggling at the Ministry. People didn't mind that she was smart…they didn't like that she was aware that she was smart. They wanted her to write reports and spill out answers without actually putting forth an opinion or, Merlin forbid, defend those opinions over the ideas of less-intelligent _Pureblooded_ wizards or even receive credit for the ideas that she put forward.

"You're an idiot," she couldn't help but smile a bit as she said it.

"I've made my peace with it," Ron shrugged good-naturedly, his face lightening for the first time in hours as he successfully broke a bit of the strained tension between them. "Besides most people are idiots when you're comparing them to a genius. But you have no idea what happened with Harry?" he asked, this time more seriously.

Hermione shook her head. "I…I didn't think it was possible to destroy Dementors, especially without a wand."

"That's because the last time a person was able to produce a natural patronus was roughly 300 years ago," Severus Snape answered as he stalked down the hall beside two men that Hermione didn't recognize but thought looked vaguely familiar. The older man in particular reminded her of someone and if she wasn't so emotionally and mentally exhausted, she was sure she would have figured out his identity immediately. Though as she looked at the three men, she was surprised to note that even after nearly 36 hours of continuous physical and mental strain, she was still looking better than they were at the moment. All three appeared to have been through the wars but her questions on their appearances were derailed by the more pressing issues at hand.

"You mean _that's_ happened before?" Ron asked in surprise.

The gruff looking older man gave a stiff nod, "it's a rare occurrence. I think there's only been three or four recorded instances in history; though of course, recorded history is never the whole story. Last time was during what the muggles consider to be the so-called Glorious Revolution. The muggles celebrate it for being a bloodless revolution, a complete transition of power with no violence or bloodshed. Which of course is ridiculous, nothing is that simple. It's just that no one remembers that there was a battle. Or more importantly, that there was an attempted execution of an innocent wizard. Long story but my point is you might take note that William and Mary ascended to the throne in 1688 and the International Statue of Secrecy that Britain had stubbornly been holding out from agreeing to took effect in 1689 so…I'll allow you to draw your own conclusions on that one."

Hermione's eyes widened at the implications of such an event, her classes on Wizarding History had been quite terrible and very little had ever been said about the events leading up to and surrounding the enactment of the International Statue of Secrecy beyond the fact that it was the single greatest coordinated effort of magic that the world had ever seen. In a single day and night, every single Muggle had been literally forced to _forget_ that they knew about the existence of magic. Those witches and wizards that had happily been integrated into muggle society had been forced out entirely and entire locations like Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley and later Platform 9 ¾ were concealed from those that didn't have magic permanently. To think that such an event had been preceded by the occurrence that she had witnessed less than twelve hours prior was both awe inspiring and oddly unsurprising. She had seen the reaction of the wizards, felt her own mind and even her very magic respond to the display of pure energy that she had witnessed and yes…she could believe that such an event would have spurned such a radical change if the reason why the patronus had been created had been in response to muggles interfering or knowing about magic.

"So what happens now?" Ron asked.

"I believe that would be up to Mr. Potter," the old man said, his beard twitching in amusement. "Your friend…well I think you all might be surprised by what this actually means for us."

"Yes, well, the sooner Potter wakes up the faster we can deal with more pressing issues," the third man spoke.

"Mr. Diggory," Ron said quietly, "I-I haven't seen you in a long-time sir."

"Call me Amos," he replied shortly though not rudely. "You're old enough and we have more important things to do."

"Where have you been?" Hermione couldn't stop herself from asking, perhaps imprudently.

Snape gave his two former students a smirk that she remembered well from her Hogwarts days, one full of condescension and scorn- two things that Severus Snape had been largely missing since he had lost his prestigious position of spy in the Order.

"That's a complicated answer but I think in Gryffindor terms you might call it…saving our world."

HPHPHP

Harry was comfortable. It was a realization that had come to him rather slowly and alongside the determination that he was warm, relatively pain free and laying on a wonderfully soft mattress was the dawning surprise that he wasn't cold, aching and laying on concrete.

But he wasn't in Azkaban any longer, his tired mind supplied. _Of course,_ he would be comfortable. _So why was there still a feeling of surprise that lingered with him…_

The Dementor. The crowd cheering for his soul. His failed attempt at using Felix' trick of a Gaes to convince everyone that Tyson was their enemy rather than their leader. The Kiss…

How? was the prominent question on his mind. He should be dead- or _worse_ , there was no possible way to survive but...but no, wait… more memories came back to him, these tinged with fear but at the moment the fear and horror of it all was muted in a way that was hard to describe. In fact, everything felt…different and he couldn't explain it yet. Shouldn't he be feeling horrible? Terrified?

He had been prepared for death.

In some ways he had been prepared for death for a long time but the will to survive is a hard thing to abandon. It wasn't in Harry to give up or walk away. He had fought. Always. Even when it had seemed impossible, even when it had seemed downright foolish to continue, he had fought.

But this time…it wasn't so much giving up or even surrendering as…mutually assured destruction. And that was a feeling that Harry could live- or die- with. It had been his last truly cohesive thought, that if he had to die at least he would be taking a piece of Voldemort's cursed soul with him. And perhaps at long last, finally, he could find happiness. Simple happiness with those he loved. As the scaly hands gripped the back of his neck and the freezing breath of the Dementor enveloped him, Harry had not spared his thoughts for Voldemort or Ivan Tyson. He had not thought about Remus Lupin and the fact that the man would probably die alone because he refused to take the chance on love. He had not thought about Dumbledore's lies and betrayals. Or his lost friendships. He had not even thought about all the pain and grief from Azkaban that he was at long last leaving behind.

Instead Harry had met the Dementor with his thoughts solely on those that he loved. Desperately hoping that he could still be reunited with Maggie. Dreams that he would finally see Sirius and his parents. He even remembered his _friends._ Not their betrayals or his anger, he had brooded on that for so long that it was a rant that he knew by heart, but in his last moments he wanted to remember the three of them as they had once been. When it had been the three of them against the world.

Harry could not say that he was successful in his attempt to forgive Ron and Hermione in his last moments even if he wanted to greet his death with happiness rather than anger, but he could at least die thinking of the good times they had shared together and knowing that he had once had two friends that he had loved dearly and had loved him as well.

He remembered turning towards the Dementor and raising his head, determined to maintain that small shred of dignity that remained. Feeling oddly...almost inexplicably _proud_ of himself for never turning into the man that the Wizarding World had accused him of being. His soul would be torn from his body, his name and reputation forever disgraced but he had never _sold_ his soul to another, he had never betrayed who he was or what he had always believed in.

The soul that would leave him would be his own rather than one bought by another and controlled like a puppet.

He could remember the slimy, decaying hands that had wrapped around the back of his neck, the frighteningly cold breath and the rattle that sounded like Death itself as it had inhaled more than his breath…it had inhaled his essence and he had felt...undone. Broken and yet whole at the same time. Harry wasn't sure if he would ever be able to describe it, even to himself, the feeling of being Kissed. He wasn't convinced he would ever want to examine those agonizing moments long enough to try.

It was quiet now. Bright, despite the moderate lighting, in the too white room. The bed was comfortable but now that his senses had returned more fully, he could feel the roughness of the hospital's crisp sheets. Wizarding hospitals were thankfully free of the antiseptic smell of muggles ones but there was still a sterility about the place that left Harry feeling slightly uncomfortable, memories of his Aunt Petunia and Privet Drive pushing at his subconscious.

But in spite of these minor discomforts there was an inordinate feeling of…relief. Joy. Surprise. Even fear. How had he survived? Did that flash of light happen as he remembered it? Was the Dementor destroyed? And if it was…how likely was it that there would be a repeat performance? As far as Harry knew, surviving an execution sentence did not excuse you from the sentence. If they thought that Harry was immune to Dementors, would they simply kill him? Harry snorted…he had survived that as well- if they felt any fear about using another Dementor, similar concerns might come up about the use of the _Avada Kedavra_.

For the first time in his life, Harry found true meaning of the phrase _The-Boy-Who-Lived._ This was marked the second time Harry had done what should have been impossible. The first time he had been a mere infant and yet even ten years later he had re-entered the world as almost more myth and man. Harry knew enough about wizards to know that they were damn superstitious, no telling what they would be thinking in this moment. Perhaps they would believe that he truly was unable to be killed at all. Would that help him because they were in awe or would it destroy him because of their fear?

And even under all of this swirl of emotion, there was a greater certainty. The Horcrux. It was gone. He couldn't know for certain of course, he had never known that it was there to begin with but the absence of it…it was felt.

Harry was lighter. Calmer. He was….and it was strange to say this and realize that it was perhaps the first time in about 19 years- he was _himself._

Harry's thoughts on how to prove that the Horcrux was truly gone was interrupted by the opening of the door. Three Healers in green robes entered the room, staring for a moment in frank and undisguised awe. There was a short, fairly attractive woman, a man in the middle that was short and balding and another man on the left that was taller but more average looking. The term non-descript seemed to radiate from the man.

"M-Mr. Potter...it is such an honor," the woman on the right breathed excitedly.

Oh. So they were back to this then. Harry felt his fist clench involuntarily at the women's nerve. He swore, the Wizarding World's fluctuating attitudes towards him was enough to give someone whiplash.

"And here I was worried that the lack of handcuffs on the bed was only a temporary oversight," Harry retorted, perhaps too impulsively for his own good. He had survived the Kiss and Harry knew better than anyone doing the impossible was enough to garner undeserved but rabid praise among Wizards….he also knew that their awe could change quickly to fear and disgust and he had no idea where on this little spectrum he actually fell at the moment.

He was relieved when he saw all three Healers flush guiltily. So, he _was_ their hero once again. Not a position that he would so casually disregard as he once had. If the Wizarding World was foolish with their affections, Harry felt it was about time that he took advantage of the fools.

"Can you tell me if everything is alright?" Harry settled for asking, trying to avoid further probing questions until he had a chance to think about how he wanted to handle things.

"We- we need to conduct a more thorough exam now that you're awake Mr. Potter…" the same woman responded.

Harry only nodded his acceptance and the next hour consisted of some rather intensive spell casting, blood samples and various questions about what he remembered from the Kiss, tests on his short-term memory, tests on long term memory and finally a basic psych test that Harry recognized from his days in Azkaban under Maggie's care.

Routine psych evals happened every three months to those prisoners involved in the Training Program to ensure that they were still 'suitable candidates for the interrogation classes.' Maggie had once confided in him worriedly that she wasn't sure if it helped Harry that she continued to put down that he had passed and therefore forced him to continue in the program or if she should lie and risk perhaps worse consequences for him. Wizards that couldn't help with the interrogation classes had…darker purposes in the training regime.

Harry had told her that he was more worried about her facing consequences if it was ever discovered that she lied on an official report. After that they had both spent the 'exam' undressed on the exam table doing far more… _entertaining_ activities than asking for various emotional responses to stimuli.

Harry cooperated, lifting limbs and shifting as he was asked and answering all of the questions they gave him politely if not with any warmth or enthusiasm for speaking to them. The exam was an odd mixture of both thorough in wanting to see if anything was wrong with him and yet rather rushed as though they were determined from the start to declare him perfectly fit. Harry himself was torn. He had no explanation for how he had survived but knew that it wasn't natural to be able to walk away from a Dementor with your soul intact. But then again…was it? Harry had only recently learned that he wasn't only carrying his own soul, was it possible that the Dementor had grabbed Voldemort's and thought it was finished? Or was consuming a Horcrux so evil that it actually destroyed the Dementor from the inside out?

He wanted to know with real certainty that he hadn't seemingly survived unscathed only to find out that he was going to die or, probably more likely, go insane from the experience. But any questions that he would have asked for his own piece of mind died on his lips as he stared with distrust at the Healers- Healers hired by the Ministry and therefore not to be trusted. The Ministry had been making his life hell for years and if nothing else, he knew for a fact that Ivan Tyson wasn't about to let him go without a fight. And so, Harry endured it all in relative silence, only speaking when answering the numerous questions they asked him, making sure that his answers were right in line with what he had learned from Maggie were the 'Ministry approved guidelines.'

"Everything seems to be in order, Mr. Potter," one of the Healers, Harry thought they might have introduced themselves but he hadn't cared to pay attention, told him with an earnest expression that Harry only found hypocritical. It was easy to call him Mr. Potter and offer him comfort and care when he was their miracle. When he had impressed them, he was worthy of respect. But when he had been a prisoner? Then he had been 'scum', 'traitor'…'whore'. Distantly Harry recognized that these weren't the same people that had hurt him, but did it matter? They had never helped him either and Harry was too consumed with his own thoughts at the moment to worry very much about fairness at the moment.

"What happens now?" Harry asked.

There was an uncomfortable shift in the room as though, until Harry had mentioned it, no one else had considered the fact that he was still a prisoner of the state. "We want to keep you here for 24 hours for observation, you're underweight and dehydrated, and overall rather run-down, nothing life threatening or even cause for real alarm in the long run but we recommend rest as well as a course of potions that will help you get back to a level of health and fitness a man of 20 years old should be at. After that…."

"I'm sorry Mr. Potter, we don't know yet what the arrangements are. Obviously, you're innocent and the Ministry can't possibly hold you," the middle man rushed to explain and Harry raised an eyebrow _'obviously you're innocent'_.

So, they didn't think that it was just a freak occurrence or perhaps a baffling display of magical power, his survival of the Kiss had done what four years of stubborn insistence against torture had not, they believed that him now. "But…well officially you haven't been released yet. I'm- I'm sure its just a matter of paperwork…you understand I'm sure."

The only thing Harry was sure of was that he had much better understanding of how things worked in the Wizarding World than the man in front of him that seemed to genuinely believe that Harry's innocence was enough reason for the Ministry to let him go after all this time. Harry only nodded his understanding.

"Mr. Potter, you have a few visitors that have been anxious to see you, it's your choice of course, if you would like we can send them away," guy on the left said, who seemed to almost relish the opportunity to be the one that would get to self-importantly send people away from the newly-restored hero's room.

"Who is it that wants to speak to me?" Harry asked first. He certainly didn't want to speak to anyone from the Ministry and if it was Moody or Lupin from the Order that had come to suddenly recruit him as their new leader he would tell them to fuck off very quickly.

"A Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Snape, Mr. Diggory and Mr. Dumbledore."

"Mr. Diggory wants to see me?" Harry asked in surprise. The last time he has spoken to the man Harry had, coincidently enough, also been talking to him from a hospital bed. The man and his wife had come to see Harry the day after the Tri-Wizard Tournament and Harry had tried to give him the prize money that even now he felt Cedric had properly deserved. That had been over five years ago at this point and he couldn't imagine what the man wanted to say to him now.

"And wait, did you say, _Mister_ Dumbledore?" Harry asked only now realizing that he had never heard anyone refer to the Headmaster in that fashion. Everyone always called him professor, with the occasional use of Headmaster as a title but never Mr. And wasn't the man still in intensive care himself?

"Yes, Aberforth Dumbledore." Now quite thoroughly intrigued, Harry allowed the visitation, much to apparent disappointment of at least two of the three Healers.

As they were headed out however, Harry's opinion of them rose ever so slightly when the last one to exit turned to him and said, "as a Healer, I see unfortunate things happen to people all the time. And the Wizarding World is filled with almost unavoidable danger…but what was done to you was the greatest injustice I have ever witnessed. And the worst part is that I never would have realized that until Magic spoke to us. You would be well within your rights to turn your back on us all Mr. Potter, and I know I have no right to ask you but I hope someone that has shown themselves to be as remarkable as you can find it in your heart to forgive us. To help us. Because I think we need it more than we could ever know."

The man did not wait for a response and for the first time Harry wished that he had paid attention to their names. He didn't know if he could forgive any of them. He was pretty sure that none of them deserved it. But that didn't stop him from feeling that whether he could forgive what had done to him or not…he wouldn't be able to avoid helping where he could. He didn't have it in him to sit on the sidelines- he often wondered how so many people could. And there was no denying that the Healer was right in saying that the Wizarding World desperately needed help.

There was a hesitant knock before a more forceful push and Harry watched with some wry amusement as Severus Snape barreled in, pushing Hermione aside when it seemed that her entrance was not to his standards. Ron and Hermione, the two people that Harry would probably still call his best friends if out of nothing more than simple habit at this point, came in looking thoroughly miserable. It was clear from their rumpled clothing, pale faces, bloodshot eyes and the longer-than-five-o'clock shadow that Ron was currently sporting that they had not slept in a long time, possibly since Harry had last seen them. Both seemed uncertain whether they should be looking at Harry in the eye and issuing an apology or staring at the ground and waiting for him to grant them permission to speak. At the moment, this was too much of a decision for Harry.

He honestly couldn't begin to understand his own feelings towards the two people that once meant the most in the world to him. Four years ago, he would have traded almost anything for them to look at him like that. Far worse than any physical torture or blow the Wizarding World could have collectively given him was the loss of his two friends. There had been times that his anger and frustration at what seemed to him to be willful blindness had felt very much like hatred. But of course, he didn't hate them. He hated Voldemort. He hated Ivan Tyson. He had a very, _very_ strong personal dislike for more than a few Aurors and Order members. But for Ron and Hermione? That was a much more complicated set of emotions.

Harry wasn't an overly complicated person so he decided to address what he actually considered to be the more straight-forward problem at the moment- why in the world Severus Snape had practically been beating down his door to see him the moment he woke up along with Amos Diggory and Aberforth Dumbledore, a man he had never met before.

"So…there are more than two sides to war?" Harry asked without preamble. "I assume this is your…mystery cabal."

"Cabal makes us seem sinister, downright nefarious you might say," the man that Harry could only guess was Aberforth Dumbledore answered, "we like to see ourselves more as…the path of least resistance."

"Well that's one difference between you and your brother- Albus Dumbledore likes to make everything as hard as bloody humanly possible."

Hermione looked almost reflexively offended while Ron seemed to have settled for rueful acceptance of the characterization. Aberforth however let out a bark of laughter and shook his head. "Well these two have been right about you I see. Severus always had his doubts that you were guilty and Amos here…well he never could get past the idea that a boy that would hold back tears of pain while offering up a thousand galleons in prize money to the parents of what should have been his rival in the Tournament would have been secretly working for Voldemort all this time."

Snape let out a hiss at the name but Aberforth didn't bat an eyelash at him, instead he was sizing Harry up in a way that was both very much like his brother and yet at the same time completely different. Albus Dumbledore had a gaze that Harry often compared to an x-ray. It felt like every part of you- your memories, your intentions, your thoughts- were all open to him in that moment. Aberforth Dumbledore was not as probing and yet Harry still sensed that the man missed nothing.

Harry glanced over at Amos Diggory. The man had aged in the years since his son's death but it hadn't weakened him. If anything, he had become harder. The lines on his face darkening and deepening, wrinkles that were once laugh lines around his eyes were now overshadowed by the frown lines around his mouth. His hair was lighter, liberal streaks of grey throughout when Harry didn't remember many in the past, but not yet white and certainly not unkempt aside from the fact that all three men looked as though they had been through the wars.

"And what do you consider 'the path of least resistance'?" Harry asked.

Snape was the one that answered. "If you remember the chaos of the last few days, the attack on the Ministry was not the seemingly random incident of violence our esteemed Ministry feels it is. But rather the attack had a purpose-"

"The housing records," Harry finished and Snape inclined his head though his face flashed with impatience at the interruption.

"I work for the Ministry," Amos interjected, "and I'm of the opinion that it often pays to learn from your enemies."

Harry wasn't sure what the man meant, but Hermione gave a sharp gasp, "you found the records of the houses for the escaped Death Eaters?"

"Ah your long-awaited points for Gryffindor at last Miss Granger," Snape sniped rather nastily. "Obviously we could not get ahold of all the records that we would have liked and several houses, notably the Malfoy Manor, are far too protected for people of our resources to break through, but for several dozen unfortunate flunkies, I believe that they will have wished they had remained in Azkaban."

"Spoken like a man that hasn't been there," Harry muttered. "Are they dead?" He asked louder, cutting off any response his former professor might have made.

"The ones that we and our associates were able to locate? Yes. Nearly four dozen Death Eaters in the last two days."

"You killed them? All of them?" Hermione asked them aghast.

"Were you expecting us to host some kind of brunch where we ask them nicely to surrender? Wherever would we find enough proper stemware for the drinks? Though I suppose one never should underestimate the importance a good scone can make in persuading your enemies to make peace," Snape answered drily. "Need I remind you that we are at _**war.**_ A war that we're losing already and as of four days ago, we have started to lose almost irrevocably."

"We're not a large force but we are efficient," Aberforth elaborated. "I was never one for my brother's fancy plans, he would have infiltrated and spied and plotted for the next ten years and then agonized over every life he had to take no matter how unavoidable. We," he gestured towards his co-conspirators, "as it turns out, have rather drastically different definitions of 'unavoidable deaths'. They picked their side, and in the midst of a war, our side is going to kill their side."

"Do you know even know if all the people that escaped are actually fully on Voldemort's side?" Ron asked skeptically. "Look at Harry, everyone thought he was guilty but at least he wasn't killed."

Amos shrugged but looked unapologetic, "we're as certain as we can be. Could there have been people that could have flipped or had gotten in over their heads or hell, were just plain arrested for a crime they didn't commit? It's possible, but it's not something we can afford to agonize over now. We saw a serious threat and we neutralized it as much as possible. And I might remind you that near three hundred Death Eaters escaped- we took out less than 50. The problem is hardly resolved."

"Why come here and tell me?" Harry asked. "No one seems to have stopped you or even suspects you, but you run over here and wait outside my hospital room to let me know that you… what, exactly…assassinated a few dozen people?"

"Well no, my dear boy, an assassination implies that we killed people of prominence or significance to a political regime. You _assassinate_ Voldemort, we were only responsible for the murder of several third-rate flunkies. It sounds much less impressive and yet should not be discounted as valuable to the war effort," Aberforth corrected Harry.

Harry felt his eyes widen and wasn't sure if he should laugh or be utterly appalled.

"That's not funny," Hermione answered stiffly. _Well that was one vote_.

"Still true," Ron answered with a snort, and in a strange sense of déjà vu, Harry had that familiar feeling of the two of them taking opposite views of the same situation and yet still being on the same side of things in the bigger picture.

"To answer your question," Snape cut in with an impatient glare at the older man, "I assume that once again Potter, you are in complete ignorance as to the significance of what you did?"

Harry shot Snape an unimpressed look. He had just woken up in hospital, though feeling better emotionally than he had been in quite some time, truth be told. Physically, he still felt like shit and wasn't in the mood for a repeat performance of the 'Potter-is-so-arrogant-and-doesn't-deserve-any-consideration-from-us' lecture from Snape at the moment.

"If you're asking me how I survived the Kiss-"

"Actually, your escape from death this time is only semi-miraculous Potter in that it is not unprecedented like surviving the Killing Curse. It's rare, incredibly, undeniably rare, but it has happened. I suppose that is what happens when one jumps the shark at such a young age though, everything else is just a disappointment."

Aberforth's lips twitched which Ron glared at Snape's attitude but Harry let out an aggrieved sigh, patience beginning to wear thin but too curious as to why the man was here to actually escalate the barbs into a proper argument. Harry raised his eyebrows and gave his former professor an impatient look.

"We are aware of how you survived," Snape answered curtly. Harry furrowed his brows; that was certainly news to him. He had lived through it and still wasn't sure how he had managed to come out of it with his soul intact. In fact, if his theory was right, Harry might actually be fully whole for the first time in nearly 19 years.

"Natural Patronus. Magic in its most pure and unbridled form and, very fortunately for you I might add, in the esteemed opinion of leading popular magical theorists, only possible to manifest in a person with the purest of intentions."

Harry frowned, "Nice as that sounds…I wouldn't say that I have the _purest_ of intentions."

Aberforth shrugged lightly and Harry could see a lot of differences from his brother in that pose. The Headmaster would have already had a working theory ready for anything Harry said or objected to in the explanation, but he also would have been deeply interested in such a rare magical occurrence and all of the factors that led up to it. Aberforth Dumbledore seemed to be far more concerned with the end results of actions than the 'how's and 'why's of how they came about.

"No one has perfectly pure intentions all the time but I would wager that when that Dementor was coming for you, you weren't feeling angry or upset. Just about anyone else is consumed by their misery seconds before they lose their soul but I imagine that you were thinking of something else at the time. People you care about perhaps?"

Harry swallowed and thought that he must have paled because Hermione suddenly looked over at him with frank concern. "Maggie."

Hermione let out a soft exclamation while Ron looked over at her in confusion. "Who?"

"Maggie Clark…she was Harry's girlfriend."

Ron's eyes widened dramatically before he gave a sympathetic groan, "oh…mate."

Harry shook his head; he wasn't going to discuss this with them. They had never seen the two of them together. Harry's life in Azkaban had been so separate than the one he remembered from Hogwarts that even discussing Maggie with them was strange and unsettling. They didn't deserve to know about her or mourn as he did.

Aberforth gave Harry a look of sympathy as well, whether the older man knew who they were talking about or not it was hard to say but the man could obviously piece together the big picture. "But I imagine that wasn't the only thing you thought about was it? Were you thinking of your friends perhaps? Did you forgive them?"

Ron and Hermione looked up, startled by this sudden question but both looked almost insanely hopeful that this had been the case.

Harry frowned slightly, feeling strangely guilty as he admitted, "no. Not really. I remember thinking that I wanted to but…" He kept his eyes trained mostly on Snape and his mini group of assassins rather than his own but he could see that both had deflated slightly, though Harry could say that to their credit, neither looked surprised to learn that Harry hadn't forgiven them yet.

"But I didn't want to think about that. Instead…" he shrugged, briefly considering how odd a conversation this was to have with Professor Snape of all people. A man that he had once loathed for being nothing but a cruel bastard, a man that he even now he could not imagine being remotely capable of feeling the maelstrom of emotions that Harry had gone through in what he had honestly considered to be his final conscious moments.

"Ron and Hermione were once the best friends that I ever had. Almost every good memory that I have has one or both of them in it. I didn't want to die thinking about the worst parts of my life so… instead I thought about the best. I thought about them at their best," he clarified.

Snape nodded academically while Amos looked interested in what Harry had to say. "Was that all you thought about?"

Harry hesitated but he really saw no reason why he should keep it a secret at this point. "Dumbledore- your brother I mean," Harry added with an incline of his head in Aberforth's direction, "never told any of you why he never even questioned my arrest, did he?"

Snape's eyebrows for the first time in genuine surprise and Aberforth smirked and shook his head. "Albus really is as smart as people give him credit- probably even smarter if you can believe that- but no one ever realizes that he is a cold, _calculating_ bastard when he wants to be."

"What are you talking about Harry?" Hermione asked.

Harry let out a slow breath, that feeling that he had woken up with, that…peace that had alluded him for so long was still present despite the heaviness of the conversation.

"He knew that you were innocent!" Ron yelled.

Harry shook his head, "it's not that simple. Dumbledore thought that I had physically committed the crimes he just…thought I didn't really have full control over my actions."

"What like he thought you were touched in the head?" Ron asked even as Snape looked vaguely exasperated at what he no doubt found to be an overly simplified explanation and Hermione elbowed him in the ribs sharply as she muttered, 'honestly Ron, you could have learned a bit of tact!'

Harry grinned in spite of himself, "smooth as ever mate," he said sarcastically causing Ron to flush slightly in embarrassment. "But no, worse than that really. Those Horcruxes that you all have been looking high and low for? Well…turns out that I am one. Or should I say _was_ , I'm almost positive that the Dementor took care of that little problem for us."

For once the expressions in the room were almost identical in their predominant emotion: shock. Ron's jaw had dropped open, Aberforth's brow had risen, even Snape looked paler than usual, making him almost ghost-like in complexion. Hermione's eyes were wide and she was shaking her head slowly back and forth in disbelief. "That's impossible."

Harry shook his head, "don't forget, you heard it from Dumbledore himself, 'the existence of one soul doesn't preclude the existence of another'."

"But… how?" Ron wondered.

Harry tapped the scar on his forehead, "I wasn't lying about those visions and Dumbledore isn't an idiot. Aberforth had it right- smart as hell but a calculating bastard. Dumbledore figured out that the link that I had to Voldemort wasn't just an ordinary magical 'connection', if those even exist in the first place and I guess if you go with the 'expert' opinion of St. Mungo's, they don't. But if either of you had been with me when I saw Voldemort in the Ministry Atrium in our Fifth Year you would know that Voldemort was able to possess me. Fully. He moved my mouth, made me speak and I was like a…puppet along for the ride. I pushed him out but it was…one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'm still convinced it was mostly luck."

"Your bread and butter, Potter," Snape muttered.

Harry shrugged, he couldn't deny that. "Well as I've said before, 'better lucky than good' and somehow in spite of everything when it really matters, I've always been lucky.

"Except…I think Dumbledore thought that luck had run out. He really did think that I tortured the Dursleys and killed Mrs. Figg, he just thought that it was because Voldemort was controlling the Horcrux. At that point, I was too dangerous to be around the Order, never mind the students at the school but Dumbledore could hardly explain the situation to the Ministry or evenworse, let Voldemort know that he knew about the Horcruxes, so he said nothing and allowed me to go to Azkaban."

"You sound like you're defending the man!" Amos declared in near outrage.

"Indeed Potter, you seem remarkably…accepting of these Machiavellian schemes on your life," Snape added.

"Forgiving? Hell no. But I do understand the rationale even if I hate it. Dumbledore has never much concerned himself with my comfort as long as I survived. I made Dumbledore swear an Unbreakable Vow that if I helped him get the locket, then he was going to get me released from Azkaban no matter what."

"And then he was poisoned."

Harry snorted, "damn convenient timing, really. Part of me thinks the old man knew the whole time he wouldn't make it out of that cave in any condition to live up to his side of the bargain."

"And now?" Snape asked. "You believe the soul fragment is gone?"

Harry nodded slowly, "I felt something…rip out of me. And it's hard to describe because honestly, I never knew the thing was there the whole time anyway, but when I woke up, I felt…different. Better or…lighter somehow. Then again, I did just survive the Dementor's Kiss, so to simply say that I'm feeling better than I have in a long time might be me projecting a bit," he added with a shrug.

"I bet Dumbledore has a way of knowing for sure," Ron said, face still pale and shocked at the information he had just learned.

Harry nodded before running a hand tiredly through his hair. "Right, but yeah, back to the original topic, that was the other thing I was thinking of during the Kiss. I didn't fight it because I knew that taking my soul would take a piece of Voldemort's and that made it all…strangely worthwhile. Though I will say that I'm delighted to find that I can still personally kill the bastard myself."

Ron snorted, "knowing Tyson he might actually bring you up on murder charges for doing that. Harry…Hermione and me, we tried, we tried everything mate, we talked to everyone that we could to try and convince them that you were innocent and everyone basically told us that they didn't give a damn. Tyson isn't going to make this easy Harry."

"And once again Mr. Weasley makes us all wonder if he's honestly considered the 'pretty' one of the group because he most certainly isn't the smart one," Snape cut in with characteristic acidity. "Ivan Tyson will find it very hard to cause you any more trouble Mr. Potter."

"Why is that?" Harry asked. "He's the Minister and I know that he's out to get me. He was worried about me while I was Azkaban! Now? I wouldn't be surprised if he hired someone to kill me."

It was Aberforth that answered this time, his voice tinged with just a hint of mirth as he said, "you asked us why we came to you of all people? There are some events that occur in our world that cannot be ignored, I don't just mean that in a moral or cerebral sense- I mean a very legal one. Perhaps if you had survived the Killing Curse as an adult, particularly a wealthy one that could hire yourself a very good solicitor, or if anyone had thought to do it on your behalf as a child, similar provisions could have been made for such an event but as you are all too aware Potter, NO ONE has ever survived the Killing Curse. It was thought to be impossible and people do not make plans for the impossible. But as explained to you just now, surviving the Dementor's Kiss is very rare, but quite fortunately, not unprecedented. And I think you'll find that no one has ever had entirely pure intentions. The influence you have come into in this moment is…substantial."

"What do you mean by substantial?" Hermione asked, that old flare for rare knowledge present in her eyes.

Snape tilted his head slightly as though to indicate that it was subjective. "It's hard to say. It's certainly not a blank cheque. Potter here hasn't just become the impromptu Minister of Magic, much as that idea probably horrifies him. However, this is old tradition and the Wizarding World has always paid respect to old traditions. Add to that the fact that I have heard that Potter's last act before the Kiss was to publicly condemn the Minister, so his reputation is probably in tatters even as we speak. The influence Potter has…while legal, is not precisely official either. He has the right to petition the Wizengamot and while _technically speaking_ they are under no obligation to enact his policies they would have to give them every consideration and when you take into account your sudden…return to celebrity status, getting your agenda across will be easy."

"We want to work with you Harry. The Order hasn't helped you and while I can't especially claim that we have, most of us at least believed in you. I always thought you would be important to this war, but you can't do that on your own and you need people that you can trust."

"That's why you came here and confessed everything to me? You want to what… work for me?"

Snape glared at him, "not if you reincarnated yourself as Merlin himself and dripped pure magic from your eyeballs Potter. I will not _work for you,_ but I do wish to work _with_ you." Snape paused and it was visible effort that the man added, "I consider you a man of not only talent but incredible potential, Potter, but you are untrained, largely uneducated and hugely inexperienced in both politics and the mechanics of war. I have dedicated the whole of my adult life to learning these things…you- we need each other."

Harry knew, perhaps more than Snape fully realized, how difficult it was for the man to admit that he needed Harry as much as Harry needed Snape, probably because it was just as hard for Harry to admit the truth in this statement. Harry needed allies. After so many years of injustice and heartache, he had been dealt a stunning reversal of fortunes and he knew that he couldn't allow the opportunity to pass even a little bit without making the absolute most of it.

Harry had entered the Wizarding World as an entirely naïve eleven-year-old. Physically and emotionally neglected by the Dursleys and even the muggle world in general had in no way prepared Harry for his instant stardom. He had never wanted to be famous, never liked crowds of people staring at him. He had literally gone from the boy in the back of the classroom that was assumed to be a delinquent and probably even mentally slow to having the expectations of the Wizarding World thrust upon him.

He had ignored the press in 4th Year, too embarrassed and overwhelmed to know what to do- not that anyone had helped him. It had not been for several years later when these topics had come up with Felix that he had even thought to wonder why his Head of House or Headmaster had not helped him at all with the treacherous _modus operandi_ of the press.

Fifth Year he had been painted as a lunatic and a liar, but no adult had so much as bothered to commiserate with him, never mind plant the idea of a libel suit in the mind of a teenage boy with no parental protection. Harry had always been left to his own devices and while in many ways he could be proud of what he managed to accomplish, he knew without doubt that his life had suffered due to that lack of help and guidance. He needed help.

Harry gave a decisive nod, "I think we can help each other, provided of course you help me decide who I want to go after first- Draco Malfoy or Ivan Tyson."

Aberforth chuckled even as Snape nodded, "I believe that we can come to an understanding."

 **A/N: Today marks the one year mark since I started this fic and while I know I've slowed down my updates recently during the summer, I'm happy that so many people have been keeping up with it. Thanks for all the reviews, favorites and follows. Please leave more!**

 **Next chapter we go back to the Order and some pretty long-awaited reactions and 'I-told-you-so' moments are in store. Thank you so much mylittlehazmat as always for editing this for me and for some great suggestions.**


	22. When The Chickens Come Home…

**Chapter 22: When The Chickens Come Home…**

Harry followed Severus Snape quietly into his godfather's house. _His_ house, he reminded himself. He still hadn't quite gotten used to thinking of it that way despite the fact that he had already suspected that he had inherited the house before confirming ownership by commanding Kreacher. In Azkaban, Sirius' will had been nothing more than idle speculation at best, and therefore had never seemed to be quite real.

While he might still privately think of the place as Sirius', he knew that he could no longer allow the Order to continue their delusion that he was ignorant of the correct ownership of the house. When he had arrived as their prisoner, he did not see the advantage in informing the others of his knowledge and had hoped that if they had ever turned against him, being master of the property would at least allow him a few advantages in regards to the enforced loyalty of Kreacher. Harry's own experience had taught him that wizards often underestimated House-elves when it came to both power and capability, which was a costly mistake. Harry had learned over the years to use his meagre assets to his advantage, as well as how to keep them close to the vest.

Now, however, things had changed and there was a certain giddiness that came with the realization that he could finally openly reap the benefits of being the owner of the very Headquarters the Order had made themselves so at home in.

He had been released by the Healers earlier that morning with a great deal of reluctance on behalf of the staff that Harry felt had very little to do with his actual health. Harry's return to celebrated celebrity status had come with the usual pitfalls of fame. However, Harry was no longer an overwhelmed and out-matched 12-year-old, unprepared for the attention or the crowds, but a grown man that had suffered far worse than suffocating adulation. Harry had allowed enough impatience to bleed through a polite but disappointingly indifferent mask to quell their advances. Unfortunately, in their minds, after realizing that there was nothing wrong with him physically that rest and potions couldn't fix at home, they had been forced to admit that they couldn't hold him.

However, he had been forced to wait another two hours for the Ministry to officially release him from their custody. Harry had at first been worried that when he was 'released' from hospital it would be into a holding cell at the Ministry, but had been a mixture of delighted and appallingly bemused to find himself led into a deluxe waiting room inside of St. Mungo's. From the gaudy furniture and fine food Harry gathered that the room was mostly likely usually reserved only for Wizengamot members, the Minister of Magic, visiting dignitaries or Quidditch stars. The bemusement derived from the fact that Harry could think of no reason why a single person needed a full suite simply to wait for news in a hospital. Needless to say that after spending the last four years in a cramped cell, the opulence of having a choice of _water_ was enough to make him dizzy.

However, after enjoying a rather comfortable armchair sat by a pleasantly burning fire, he allowed himself the indulgence. It soon became more than clear that by all appearances, Snape had been correct in saying that the Minister would be under a great deal of pressure not to hold him. After two hours, Harry was greeted by a virtual entourage, each person tripping over the next to try and accommodate him.

Tyson had not come himself, instead sending Rufus Scrimgeour and a few other Aurors in his stead to lay out the current terms of Harry's 'parole', but it was clear from the start that their presence was largely a formality. The Aurors in attendance were all older, none of them having passed through the Training Program during Harry's incarceration, and while Harry had the feeling that Tyson had meant the half dozen Aurors following behind none other than the Chief Auror himself to be an exercise in intimidation, the effect was ruined by the cheerful faces and friendly greetings they gave him. Perhaps to another young man greeted by several Aurors alongside the ranking officer would be off-putting, but Harry had had more than enough experience with the Aurors at their worst.

Harry had only known Scrimgeour by reputation in the past, but he could quickly see how the man had risen through the ranks to the Chief Auror position. The man was smart, quick on his feet as well as with his tongue, but at the same time there was caginess about him that spoke of personal ambition and politics. It reminded Harry of why he had so desperately wanted to avoid being Sorted into Slytherin House and at the same time made him ruefully acknowledge to himself that there was a very distinct possibility that a great deal of hardship in his life could probably have been avoided if he had simply allowed himself to embrace the Sorting Hat's offer of 'greatness'.

Then again…perhaps if he _had_ embraced that type of mindset in himself, he would never have become a person capable of producing a natural Patronus that was able to withstand the Kiss. He supposed he would never know and settled on noting that things in his life, while never simple, certainly enjoyed a flair for the dramatic.

Scrimgeour had curtly informed him that the Ministry was currently re-evaluating his case 'in light of such new and compelling evidence' and that while his conviction had not been _officially overturned_ at this time, the Minister had decided to 'magnanimously grant a supervised parole as an act of good faith'. In true politician form, Scrimgeour had a very deliberate way of speaking that gave each word weight.

Once upon a time, Harry would have been turned off by a man who's only clear loyalty was to himself. Once upon a simpler time, Harry would have not wanted to ally himself with anyone that didn't have purer intentions in wanting to help him. Harry had once felt he had the luxury of choice. Harry had once been naïve enough to think that most people were good.

Now Harry had to admire a man that was able to at once adhere completely to the letter of his orders and yet with the very tone and specific phrasing, properly convey to Harry how disgusted he was with the current administration. Scrimgeour was a man that would not start a fight that had no winners. And fighting against the current administration was a hopeless battle. Harry rather thought that the man was sincere in his dislike towards Tyson, but that might have had more to do with the fact that Tyson could run his government with unilateral power, rather than moral objection to the Minister's policies.

Harry had learned a lot over the years, not the least of which was when to hold his tongue. He was polite and even tentatively grateful towards the man. In turn, Scrimegeour seemed inclined to make things easy for Harry, and if Harry implied that he might be open to returning favors…well that was for the Chief Auror to do with as he saw fit. The 'supervision' that he supposedly required had been vague and when Snape had stepped forward and suggested that they release Harry into his custody for the time being as he was- technically speaking- still a Hogwarts professor, Scrimgeour had readily agreed.

And so now it was, roughly 46 hours after the time he should have been executed and instead was walking into his inherited posh Brownstone, a relatively free man.

"Harry!" Auggie yelled excitedly as he and Teddy ran towards him, the latter screaming in happy but incoherent childish bliss.

Harry blinked in surprise at the unexpected greeting before smiling in genuine pleasure at the novelty of seeing such uncomplicated delight in something as simple as seeing someone come through the door- especially him, of all people. "Auggie, Teddy, I missed you," he greeted them sincerely, bowing down to scoop little Teddy into his arms and ruffle Auggie's hair at the same time.

"Where have you been?" Auggie demanded in a manner that vaguely reminded Harry of Mrs. Weasley when he and Ron would disappear into the orchard during summers at the Burrow and had arrived well after dark.

"Hospital, actually," Harry answered honestly. Snape raised his eyebrows at the answer, but Harry shrugged, he had been lied to for most of his childhood and it had rarely done him any favors. He didn't need to terrify them with the details, but he saw no reason to lie outright either. "When I was in Azkaban, I got pretty sick so I had to see a Healer about getting better, just like when you have to see a Healer when you're sick."

"So you won't be all skinny and pale anymore?" Auggie asked curiously.

Harry gave a snort of surprise, thus far he had only been exposed to the benefits of the honesty that children gave you but he was beginning to see that a large lack of tact came with the bargain as well. "Right, how am I looking now?"

Teddy tilted his head and looked at him critically, "still skinny."

Auggie nodded but with a small shrug acknowledged that "at least you aren't as pale."

"Well small miracles first, I suppose. Where is everyone?" He asked, realizing that while the greeting from the children had been unexpected, he had actually anticipated a greater showing now that his innocence had been declared. He wondered if the others were simply too afraid to confront him, feeling a spike of anger at the cowardice.

"In there," Teddy pointed to the back parlor room where the door was closed tightly as though a meeting was already in progress.

He heard Snape let out a long, exasperated breath and thought he heard him mutter, "thank Merlin I missed that an entire day of hand-wringing nonsense."

"Everyone has been all crazy without you Harry," Auggie announced.

"Really? How so?" Harry asked, interested to hear what the young boys had gleaned from the events of the past two days. He knew that neither of the boys would have been able to understand what had happened, nor did he expect any of the adults to tell them, but children were perceptive enough to know when things were amiss in their small worlds and Harry wondered what they had picked up on in the household.

"Everyone was yelling at each other all day!"

"And crying!" Teddy added, "Mrs. Weasley cried lots and lots but mummy and other people too. Why are they sad Harry? Is mummy still sad?"

"I don't think so Teddy," Harry said carefully, "people, well grown-ups I should say, cry for a lot of different reasons, not just because they're sad."

"So they were happy tears? Mummy says she gets happy tears sometimes."

Harry frowned, "well no, I don't think its happy…I think, well…" Harry didn't think he was ever more relieved to be interrupted mid-thought than he was by the call of "Boys!" from a sharp voice.

"I distinctly recall your parents telling you to be…quiet…" Bill's voice trailed off as he noticed Harry standing in front of the boys. "Harry…" Bill cleared his throat and seemed to struggle for a moment before he finally said, "I didn't know you had made it back…how are you feeling?"

Harry raised his eyebrows rather pointedly at the awkward question. He knew that both of them were all too aware that Harry had arrived at the Order's illegally-gotten-Headquarters less than a week ago- _was it really less than a week ago? It seemed impossible for time to have moved so slowly_ \- looking like the incarnation of shit and no one had seemed particularly concerned about his health then.

"Been worse," Harry answered tightly. Bill looked for a moment as though he was going to grapple for something else to say but Harry was impatient for this meeting to get underway, he had more than a few scores to settle. "I suppose this means that everyone is already here?"

Bill nodded, "everyone but Professor Dumbledore that is…he woke up early this morning, Minerva spoke to him but he's still in the critical care unit for the time being. Everyone er…well everyone's been anxious to talk to you Harry, and I guess if I'm going to be first to run into you, I should be the first to apologize-"

Harry held up his hand, "no offense Bill but I'd rather not go through this individually, I'll be here all day if I did that." Harry didn't mention that part of him didn't want to give anyone the escape of not having to stand up in front of other people and admit that they had been wrong. After years of waiting and suffering and longing for them to know the truth, Harry was not about to let any of them off easily.

Something of that challenge must have glinted in his eyes because Bill winced slightly but nodded his head. "We should probably go back in, Ron and Hermione told us everything they knew but…well, people are honestly still confused about everything and…" Bill gave a hapless sort of shrug and looked embarrassed as he admittedly, "It would be probably be best if you explained everything yourself."

Harry gave a brief snort of incredulity, his eyes widening in disbelief as he scoffed, "really? After four years it occurs to all of you that it would be a lot easier if I actually got a chance to _explain everything myself_?"

Harry was eager to go into the room and finally unleash some very long-awaited insults but Snape stuck out his hand, effectively blocking his path as he rolled his eyes at his former student. "Potter, much as you no doubt deserve a wonderful moment of embarrassed irony with people far more deserving than Bill Weasley- we do not have the luxury of time and I have even less patience.

"I have little interest in sitting through some ridiculously mundane show of Gryffindor histrionics in which you decry all of your would-be-surrogate-family as hypocrites for tedious hours. Lest you forget that we are still at war, regardless of how beloved you have suddenly become. So might I suggest a brief but comprehensive 'fuck off' in general and then we can move on to more practical matters? Otherwise I should dump you here to work out your emotional issues whist I go back to those that actually have something to contribute."

Harry gave a brief snort. He couldn't recall Snape being as funny when he had been a teenager and wondered if the man's wit had honestly managed to improve or else if he should be worried that his own brand of humor was now apparently closely allied with a man that he had once sworn must be evil. Perhaps it was simply easier when he was not the target of the man's barbs. Either way, he was about to disappoint the man.

"I would hate to keep you from the murder and mayhem you are no doubt missing with Aberforth, but we need to get them on board for this to work, so either way it looks like you're going to have to be there, but as far as being _brief_ … fuck your _patience_ , I've waited four years and Merlin be damned if I'm not going to make Draco Malfoy cry."

Without further ado, Harry didn't bother to wait to be led into the back parlor but rather opened the door himself and was met with Ginny's voice loudly arguing with Ron, "and for the last time, I'm telling you that Draco would never work for his father!"

She might have wanted to say more but his entrance seemed to have the same effect on the room as a powerful Silencing Charm. For a moment the room seemed to utterly freeze and Harry had a moment of déjà vu in which he was staring out into the crowd right after the Dementor had been destroyed and his last coherent thought before darkness had overtaken him was that he was alive…and seeing that stunned surprise reflected on every face in the crowd.

He shifted just enough to allow Bill and Snape to enter the room but was careful not to break the spell of silence that had fallen. For a moment he took in the pale, exhausted faces with only slight surprise. He had been wondering how the Order had reacted but somehow, he had half-expected them all to have still slept soundly the night before. It always seemed to him that the Order had never had any trouble forgetting about him in the past. Instead he was met with a full room of wizards in rumpled, clearly day-old clothing. Day old stubble was present on most faces and copious amounts of tea and coffee seemed to have passed around liberally among the red-eyed crowd.

It sent an unexpected bolt of pleasure through him to see them sleep-deprived and anxious. Vicious, _vindictive_ pleasure was what he felt, and the feeling startled him because he could not recall a time that even in Azkaban he had felt genuine pleasure at seeing another person suffer. That pleasure was surpassed in that moment by a spike of anger at the realization that it was the Order's _indifference_ that had engineered that kind of cruelty in himself rather than the brutality and hatred, even, from the Aurors. Harry had once vowed, and then vowed again and again, that other people would not change him. He would not bow to them, change for them, break for them and yet…some small part of him had changed.

He only allowed himself a brief flash of anger at this realization but was able to productively re-direct his rage where it belonged…at those he once thought were his friends. The ones that had prided themselves on being the _good guys._ Harry had learned long ago that there were few people in life more dangerous than those convinced that they were right.

Harry took a breath, closing his eyes as he desperately tried to steady the chaotic emotions that swirled inside him. He had felt this way in Azkaban before, when things had gotten too much and he could hear Maggie's calming words in his mind- one thing at a time. Finish one thing and then worry about the rest.

That was easy- first thing on his list- make Draco Malfoy pay for his lies.

It appeared that the whole of the Order was currently present and Harry was both pleased that he had them all in one place and annoyed that without Dumbledore or himself to actually guide them, the Order had been rendered _entirely_ impotent as opposed to just largely useless as per their usual state of being. Voldemort had launched several important attacks, all of the captured Death Eaters that the Order had so proudly boasted to him about only days before-hand were free to run amok and none of them had done a damn thing about it. Harry was growing increasingly satisfied that a very different Dumbledore was stepping up and taking charge.

But for the moment- his attention was focused on the very uncomfortable looking Draco Malfoy who, in spite of Harry's own desires, was rather surprised to see was in attendance. He had been sure that the blond coward wouldn't have shown his face back at Headquarters after Harry's survival.

"Still so sure of yourself Gin?" Harry asked her idly, breaking the silence and inwardly pleased that his voice was level and controlled. He was rewarded by a deep flush from the red-head. The others still seemed fairly frozen in place. Unsure how to redirect the conversation now that the so-called Guest of Honor had arrived at the meeting and settled for turning their gazes back to the youngest Weasley for an answer.

She swallowed but it was not for nothing that a girl who had 6 older brothers had been Sorted into the House of the Brave. Her chin lifted in defiance as she said with surprising self-composure, "Ron has always seen nothing but the worst in him, but we're not kids anymore! Just because we were wrong about…about you," she stumbled slightly in having to address her words to Harry rather than Ron, but only slightly, "doesn't mean that Draco is the same person that the two of you knew when you were _eleven years old_. He changed! Draco **hates** his father."

"No, he doesn't. Draco has been lying to all of you the entire time."

Harry rather thought it was the lack of emotion that hurt Ginny the most. He didn't yell, he wasn't even particularly cruel or mean-spirited, instead conveyed the simple truth- he was only related facts.

Ginny flinched, her eyes flickering first towards Draco with a hint of insecurity and then in the direction of her family with a hint of guilt, but she shook her head resolutely. "I've been seeing Draco for over a year now, and its more than simple dating, we've discussed getting engaged soon. I love him…he _loves_ me. I _know_ he's not working with his father."

"Ginny?" Molly asked sounding hurt at the realization that such an important part of her daughter's life had been kept a secret. "Why didn't you say anything?"

Though Ginny's answer was perhaps better answered by Ron's snort of disgust and mutterings that Malfoy was selfish git that had manipulated her into dating him.

"I'm not a stupid little girl Ron, he didn't just bat his eyelashes at me and I forgot everything that he ever did! We talked about everything. You have no idea what it's like to grow up the way Malfoy did, no idea what it's like to be raised with so much prejudice and hate and…. Merlin, his whole life he was trained to do what's 'best for the family honor'. Do you have any idea what it was like for him? Draco did love his father, and that's what made it so hard for him to break away from him- but he did! He realized the man is a monster and that he couldn't be like that. And you have never appreciated that about him!"

"Have you used Vertiaserum on him?" Harry asked her. The room in general looked at him in surprise and Harry rolled his eyes. Honestly, if he hadn't lost all faith in the Order by now the fact that they had accepted Draco-Malfoy-Prince-of-Pureblood-Prejudice so readily might have shocked him. As it stood, he had taken it as a matter of course, one more indignity to suffer among many. Now more than the injustice the sheer stupidity galled him. "You want to claim that you're not this naïve little girl but what proof do you have that he was telling the truth?"

Ginny's eyes burned with anger and her clenched fists shook at her sides. "I don't need a truth potion to tell when someone lies to me."

"Has anyone given _you_ a truth potion Potter?" Draco asked, his voice shaking slightly with the remnants of false bravado. Harry idly wondered if that was all Malfoy's confidence actually had been since they were children, nothing more than bravado and posturing.

"Just because Potter managed to create a Natural Patronus doesn't prove that he was always innocent or that I'm guilty!

"No one could produce a Patronus like that if they were a cold-blooded killer," Tonks interjected as quite a few others nodded.

"Why would I still be here if I had something to hide?" Draco challenged

"That's true!" Ginny shouted above the grumblings of disagreement. "Draco came here willingly because he's innocent." Harry had to admit that he was almost impressed with the traditionally cowardly Malfoy's plan. It showed a lot more bravery than he ever would have expected of the former Slytherin to come willingly back into the Lion's Den when he must have known that Harry would have told everyone of his involvement with the Death Eaters. It was a risky move, bluffing his innocence as he was.

Snape rolled his eyes, "this is getting ridiculous, not to mention tedious. Miss Weasley from what I recall of your history any boy that gives you a compliment has been able to manipulate you since you were eleven years old." Harry thought she would flush but instead her face turned white at the reminder of her First Year as many of her family members protested Snape bringing up such a traumatic event to demonize her. Snape paid little mind to their protests or anger but instead pulled a clear vial from his robes.

"This is what should have been done 4 years ago and would have if Dumbledore wasn't a senile fool that honestly believed that being around the Order would give Young Malfoy here time and a reason to actually reform himself. Albus thought the deception would eventually become the truth but Dumbledore was always bloody optimistic."

Harry raised his eyebrows and wondered if Snape knew this as fact, or just conjecture based on Dumbledore's personality. Either one seemed perfectly plausible to him. If Snape had ever expressed his doubts that Harry had been the one to reveal him as a spy, Harry knew it would have been to Dumbledore and since the man had not revealed his theory about the Horcrux manipulating Harry into torture and mayhem, the Headmaster had probably deduced that it had been Draco Malfoy to reveal the man's true loyalties.

"I knew that little bastard was a liar from the first time he showed up here," Ron announced scathingly.

"He hasn't taken the potion yet," Charlie reminded his younger brother quietly. "I think the lot of us could learn to take a beat and actually find out the facts before jumping down each other's throats."

"So are you all going to take it?" Draco shouted out, his illusion of calm nearly shattering as forehead beaded with sweat in desperation. "I shouldn't have to take it if the rest of you aren't. Dumbledore always said that the Order was held together with trust!"

"Draco you have nothing to hide…" Ginny tried to soothe him.

"I've got as much to hide as any one of you? What we're all going to pretend that every last one of us is fucking perfect now? That we're not all hypocrites? Are you all going to spill all your dirty little secrets? How Granger is spreading her legs for a promotion because it turns out the Ministry doesn't care how many Outstandings she managed on the NEWTs? Or how about the reason wonder boy over there," Draco gestured at Ron, "can never make it to a second date with a girl. My guess is that he was always pining over Potter."

Ron flushed an exquisite shade of red that seemed to compete between embarrassment and anger. He shot a glance first at Hermione and then Harry before his glaze slid back to Hermione and Harry marveled at the fact that some things really didn't change in four years. It was truly absurd to consider that despite everything else that had turned the world mad, Ron was still self-conscious about his attraction to Hermione. Harry found it strangely comforting and it was that sense of familiarity that brought back old sense of defiance and sense of justice.

"You want to question me under Vertiaserum?" Harry challenged. "Fine. I have nothing to hide. Nothing that I haven't told dozens of Aurors as they tortured and humiliated me day after day. I don't have any fucking secrets Malfoy- the one secret that I thought I had in my life was discovered weeks ago and Maggie died because of it so if want to sit here and claim that we're being unfair, be my guest, but you're going first. You're going to take that potion and you're going to tell Ginny how you lied to her every night that you were together. You're going to tell everyone here that you congratulated yourself on how much smarter you thought you were. How you loved being a spy because it meant that no matter what side won, you were protected because you're too much of a fucking coward to make a stand. Just like you're too much of a coward to do anything except what Daddy tells you to do."

Draco flushed that pale pink that Harry remembered so clearly from their school days and he felt a burn of satisfaction that he was getting a response from the man. He could already see the doubt and even fear that was leaking into Ginny's stubborn eyes. It seemed to Harry that she was banking her entire reality on the fact that she hadn't been completely wrong about everything that she knew. He knew that she had believed wholeheartedly that he had willingly become a Death Eater, just as she had loved Draco and the reformed man she believed him to be. Already one absolute truth of her life had been proven false and now her very sanity seemed to holding on to the second.

"Take the potion Draco, if you have nothing to hide from us, then you shouldn't have a problem with taking it. You can even pick who you want to question you so you know they won't be digging for anything that we don't need to know. But you're not getting out of this," Bill said quietly. His face was pale and Harry noticed for the first time since he had been there that for the first time Bill looked old. Tired and worn down in ways that appeared nearly painful to consider.

Draco's eyes flitted in panic and Harry could see desperation as he frantically thought of any possible way he could talk himself out of this, as he had done for so long. Harry found himself wondering how Draco's silver tongue had worked its magic on the Order in the first place. Had it only been his 'warning' to Snape? How had Draco secured his place within the Order? As much as he hated the man, Harry was more than aware that Voldemort was not stupid, so he had no doubt that man had given Draco enough 'real' information to keep the Order satisfied, but had they grilled the Slytherin as viciously as the Aurors had grilled Harry?

Harry had disliked Draco and his superior, condescending attitude from the first day he had met him. Over the years, Harry had never seen a redeeming quality in the other boy, but he had heard all manner of excuses for his behavior over the years. Adults had claimed that Draco was merely young. As though all children were naturally cruel to one another. Hermione and a few other people had blamed his parents- but Harry had been raised by the Dursleys and he more than most knew that nurture in childhood was not everything. Draco Malfoy had known wealth and privilege his entire life and he had used that power to hurt others. To humiliate. To bolster his own ego at the expense of those he deemed 'lesser' than himself.

Draco had spent his entire life feeling that he deserved more than others and used lies and manipulation to see that it happened. He lied. He cheated. He stole. Harry wondered if the other boy had ever gone so far as to murder. Being a spy for the Dark Lord and safely ensconced in the Order had shielded Draco from the worst of the duties that most Death Eaters would do. Harry remembered that Malfoy in school had never been a particularly skilled duelist, his skills lay elsewhere. And Harry couldn't deny that he did in fact possess skills.

Now though, Draco's lies had run out.

Harry could see the dawning resignation in the other boy's eyes. He had seen enough broken wills in his time to recognize the signs at a glance and while once, in another lifetime, he might have felt some pity for the boy, now he could only feel a deep sense of satisfaction.

"Ginny…" Malfoy swallowed and his voice shook as he said, "if someone is going to do it, it should be you but when you question me…don't forget to ask if I love you."

Ginny's face whitened and Harry knew that the girl had finally understood that there would be no happy endings with a statement such as that.

Snape had the potion ready and Malfoy took the three drops with more decorum than Harry had actually expected of him. They could see the potion taking affect by the blank expression and smooth lines of his face.

Ginny took a deep breath before speaking, "Draco…were you the one that told You-Know-Who that Severus Snape was a traitor and a spy?"

"Yes." The answer was monotone, emotionless and yet the reaction from Ginny was one of sheer heartbreak. Her face crumpled and her breathing hitched even as anger blossomed in the eyes of the people around them.

"How…how did you know?" she asked.

"Potter. He was trying to pathetically rescue Black after the Dark Lord's vision, but he was stupid and got caught by Professor Umbridge. Granger was smart enough to distract her and get her out of the office and left myself and other Slytherins to watch over the rest of his group. But I knew that Potter was up to something- he was too desperate, too panicked to want to get out of the office and I knew it wasn't about getting in trouble. If Potter was involved, I knew that it had to have involved the Dark Lord, and I thought that Snape was a loyal Death Eater and would have known what was going on. I wanted to prove myself, ask him what I could do to help. So I left the office and followed him to offer my services. But I overheard him sending a message to Dumbledore about protecting Potter- worse I saw that it was a Patronus that looked like a mirror image of that Stag that Potter used to brag about and that's when I knew…Potter was more important to Snape than the Dark Lord and if I wanted to prove myself, I needed to reveal to him the traitor."

"You're a Death Eater?"

"Yes."

"Did your father force you take the Mark?" Ginny asked and her voice was desperate at that point.

"My father was always proud to be a Death Eater, to serve at the right hand of the man that would create the world in the image that was supposed to be. I wanted to make my father proud, he did not force me, he guided me in the direction I wanted to follow."

"What do you mean by 'create the world in the image that it was supposed to be'?" Hermione interjected and Ginny looked vaguely irritated at the interruption but Draco answered the question automatically. "A world where Purebloods and their traditions are celebrated, where people of proper blood are given the respect and position that we are entitled to have."

"You said 'one of Potter's visions'- did you know the whole time that the visions he had were real?" Lupin asked quietly.

"Yes."

"Did the Dark Lord Imperius the Healers and experts that said something like that couldn't happen?" the werewolf asked, sounding a combination of desperate and confused. Harry knew that Remus, like all of them, had bought the ridiculous lie that he had been lying about the connection that he shared with Voldemort the whole time no matter what other evidence they had been shown.

"No. I think my father said that the Ministry 'experts' didn't know anything and after the embarrassment of Potter being right about the Dark Lord's return, the Minister was anxious to discredit the person that the newspapers were already calling the Chosen One."

"Why didn't we believe him?" Molly Weasley sighed quietly, seemingly speaking her thoughts aloud with no expectation to be answered, but under the influence of the potion, Draco answered, nevertheless.

"I never really understood that part. Father told me that he had learned that Potter saved Ginny's father's life at Christmas time and I always assumed that Potter must have told the Order about his visions all along so during the trial I expected the witnesses to argue that the vision was real, but none of you did."

Hermione gave a gasping sigh and both Neville and Ron looked as though they had been punched at the stomach at that proclamation.

"You've been lying to me all this time?" Ginny whispered.

"Yes." The cold, even tone of the answer made it sound all the crueler.

Ginny was openly crying now, she was shaking her head even as her body curled in on itself in a defensive position. "Did you ever really love me?"

"Yes, for the last year I did really love you."

Charlie pulled out his wand and stunned Malfoy, the blond slumping to the side just as Alex used an _incarcerous_ spell to tie him up.

The room buzzed with questions, protests, and finally angry accusations at other members. Ginny was sobbing beside her mother, who looked stunned at everything that had been revealed while her brothers badgered her with questions about their apparent relationship. It seemed that Ron and George had been more observant than the others and had realized that the two had been involved in an actual relationship, while the rest apparently had been under the impression that Ginny had only been involved in some sort of prolonged courting ritual of flirting and attraction but nothing else, no doubt seeing their 19 year old sister as a pure virgin.

The confusion of the room was evident. "How many traitors are there?"

"Haven't we learned from the past?"

"What do we do now?"

But rather than mindless questions, it was a statement that set Harry's teeth on edge… 'we have to wait to see what Dumbledore says'.

Harry could see Snape grit his teeth and knew that the other man's patience was at an end, they had come for a reason and it was time to get on with it.

It was with a deliberate upsweep of his wand, red and green sparks shot out grabbing the attention of everyone in the room and ensuring silence. "You lot never fucking learn do you!"

"None of us knew that Draco was a Death Eater, Harry," Lupin sighed, sounding tired. Harry wondered if being continually wrong could be exhausting. "How could we? Dumbledore always-"

"And there it is! The end all, be all excuse for the great Order of the Phoenix; why have a single, independent thought of your own when Albus Dumbledore can solve all our problems because he must know everything!" Harry shook his head in disgust. "I don't expect you to be able to know the impossible, but I expect grown adults, most of whom who have already lived through one war before I was even born, to take some fucking responsibility and ask questions. Investigate. Don't just follow blindly and be relieved that when something goes wrong it wasn't your decision to do anything anyway."

"Harry…it's not simple…" Bill started.

"You're right, it's not simple. It's hard. This is a war, you think all the 'bad guys' are going to wear little signs on their neck so you can spot them? You think the truth is always cut and dry. Merlin, the worst part is I wasn't even the first person in the Order that you left hung out to dry.

"Sirius Black left his entire family behind. He ran away from his parents, his home, and a hell of a lot of money and power in the Wizarding World to fight for you. Every single one of you agreed that Sirius and my Dad were best friends but none of you even batted an eye when the Ministry arrested him for _twelve years without even a trial._

"You call yourself Sirius' friend?" Harry turned on Remus who was pale and had seemingly sprouted more grey hairs in the last two days. "You actually claim that you ever gave a damn about him when you didn't even question why he would have sold out my parents and his best friends? Oh wait…you're a werewolf. Right, and as a werewolf you couldn't petition the Ministry. As a werewolf you certainly couldn't go to any one of the other Order members," and here Harry glared at the rest of the assembled group because while they had not claimed to be Sirius' best friend, they had fought in a war together. That should have counted for something.

"You couldn't have gotten one of them, or hell, the ever-all-knowing Dumbledore to do something? But why I am surprised Remus- you have always had excuses to avoid responsibility. Or rather you have one excuse that fits all occasions. It's the reason you never sent me a single fucking letter before or during Hogwarts. Probably the reason I only found out you even knew my Dad at all because you let it slip by accident. But why am I complaining? I'm not your son, or your godson. You don't owe me anything, but let's not forget that you ditched Teddy too."

"Harry!" Tonks interjected.

"Don't defend him, you're almost as bad because I can't imagine you didn't realize who you were getting involved with, so you must have known the outcome. You were the one that chose to have a child with a man that runs away from personal responsibility. Or maybe I'm being too generous, the Order doesn't seem to recruit anyone with much deduction skill, do they?"

"Potter, that's out of line. We've made mistakes, but we have fought. From the moment Voldemort returned, we _fought_ ," Moody finally announced. Several people were nodding, tears silently streaming down many of the faces in the room. Molly and Hermione both were shaking from emotion and Harry remembered the fact that Molly had always been sympathetic than angry with him. It still hurt to know that she hadn't believed him but it wasn't the heavy betrayal he felt from so many others.

"We made mistakes Harry, we were wrong about you, we know that…I don't think any of us could tell you how sorry we really are about not believing in you, but Moody's right, we fought as best we could," Bill said, his arm around a red-faced Fleur.

Harry found himself unimpressed. "Really? You fought? And what have you actually accomplished? The professors in this very room not only knew about the Philosopher's Stone being at Hogwarts but presumably that someone was after it, but they did nothing, even when it was obvious to a bunch of First Years when the attack would happen. I told McGonagall personally that someone was after it, and I was ignored. Hell, Snape was following and threatening Quirrill for a year but was suddenly and conveniently nowhere to be found when we needed him.

"None of you managed to find the Chamber of Secrets- that was me. Have any of you actually dueled Voldemort and survived? Have you captured any of the Death Eaters that matter or were you all busy giving each other high-fives over the lowly recruits you were bagging and then sending away for free, comprehensive training?

"Don't tell me that all of you have fought against Voldemort- _I_ fucking fought. I fought when I was eleven years old and everything single one of you was oblivious to there even being a problem. I fought in prison every single day and didn't break.

"And I'm not done fighting, but I'm fucking tired of doing it alone so the rest of you are going to help me and this time we're going to do what you should have done my Fifth Year and actually listen to me because while you geniuses were off guarding a prophesy for an entire year that you _simply could have had me pick up and bring to you_ , you were wasting valuable time. Back then I would have done anything you told me to do, but I guess the one good thing to come out of your collective piss-poor decisions is that I will never do that again. I'm not a child anymore and I am tired of the bullshit. From now on- you lot are going to listen to me."

There was a ringing silence that followed this pronouncement. Several people seemed rather stunned that Harry had come in so forcefully. Perhaps they had still expected him follow orders, but Harry was going to fight the war on his terms from now on. Ron was nodding his head though and Hermione had that old look of determination in her eyes that had always preceded her following him on a crazy adventure in their school days.

However, it was with some surprise that it was Arthur Weasley that was the first person to speak. In Harry's experience, the man was usually content to allow the stronger personalities, particularly his wife, do most the talking.

"Harry is right. We wronged him and have done so for longer than he even blames us for. We all knew that we owed Harry and his parents a debt for ridding the world of You-Know-Who- but not a single one of us pushed to look into his safety. Molly and I weren't in the Order in the First War and we didn't know Lily and James personally, but perhaps…." He shrugged awkwardly but it was clear that he was blaming the others in the Order for not doing more.

"But Molly and I are at fault for not paying better attention when we needed to. Harry stayed with us over summers, our own sons told us that he was being kept in a room with bars on the windows- we did nothing to help him. Harry was being abused by those muggles and we all sent him back there year after year without listening to his protests.

"Harry saved Ginny's life, he saved my life and my family turned our backs on him." Arthur took a deep breath before he spoke again. "I am not a man that has been blessed with a lot of wealth. I don't have a high position in the Ministry. I don't have power in the Wizarding World. And yet I count myself one of the luckiest men in the world because I have a loving, wonderful family that fills me with pride everyday. But today…I am ashamed to say that every one of us failed Harry. We turned our back on him but never again. Harry- whatever you need that I can provide you, I will give you. I should have- _we_ should have remembered that you're family and family sticks together."

Harry blinked in surprise, caught off-guard by how affected he was by the man's sincere words. He could see other nodding, others making similar pledges.

It was Snape's caustic voice and utter lack of any and all sentimentality that pulled him back to the matter at hand.

"Yes, very well the people in this room are obviously nothing more than lemmings but since their current leader is unavailable to lead them off the cliff, we can all follow Potter and continue to avoid all critical thinking for ourselves since it's obvious those skills were never developed. Well done. Now Potter, can you kindly inform us of your plans."

Harry's lip twitched but he didn't grin. Instead he spent a few minutes outlining what Snape and Aberforth had been up to. It had been agreed that the two groups needed to work together as time was short and while Harry had no doubts that Aberforth had a few plans, he was still hiding, they couldn't afford to let pride keep them apart. Many in the Order had been disturbed by the group's brutal actions, they soon reconciled themselves to the necessity. Both groups needed to work together- they needed more people.

"And so how exactly are going to get close enough to the Inner Circle to make a difference?" Neville asked. "That's been a problem the whole time."

 _One thing at time Harry, finish it and move on to the next._

"Because first we're going to make sure that we have all the help we could possible get. Our first move isn't to go after Voldemort or his Inner Circle- first we go after Ivan Tyson."

 **A/N: Thank you all so much for the reviews and requests for updates. This chapter was a tough one because I wanted to give just reactions to a lot of people without it seeming strange or forced. As always, thanks so much to my beta mylittlehazmat and also special thanks to Grimjaw for some advice on this chapter as well.**


End file.
